By Daniel Bobinski
In my previous column on George Soros’ connection to the impeachment effort, I pointed out that his name is associated with progressive political agendas, and with good reason. According to the Forbes 400, Soros has donated more than $32 billion dollars over the course of his life – nearly 80 percent of his life’s income – to advance progressive causes.
You’d think that by so generously “investing” (as Soros puts it) in political candidates and causes, he would receive more positive attention in the media. Truth is, Soros knows the majority of America does not want what he’s selling, so he tries not to call attention to himself.
Soros also knows populations are easily influenced by impressive-sounding names and that most people don’t investigate things beyond a surface level. Therefore, he sets up and funds shell-organizations to elect marionettes who will vote and make policy in ways Soros wants.
The Soros Shell Game
In 2017, the year Trump took office, Soros, then 87, moved $18 billion of his $26 billion fortune into his Open Society Foundation, the organization Soros started and personally funds so he can influence governments and society. This is the mother lode that funds hundreds of left-wing PACs, Super PACs, left-leaning candidates, and other progressive causes.
Below are only four of more than 200 organizations in the United States that receive funds from the Open Society Foundation. At first glance, the names of these organizations would appeal to any true Constitutional patriot – those whom Hilary Clinton refers to as “deplorables.”
American Constitution Society for Law and Policy American Family Voices Campaign for America’s Future Faithful America These organizations look reasonable, but let’s take a closer look.
The goal of those who founded the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, as revealed by DiscoverTheNetworks.org, was “countering what they saw as the corrupting influence that the conservative views of the Federalist Society were having on young law students from coast to coast.” I don’t know about you, but countering conservative views is hardly what I think of when I see the name, “American Constitutional Society.”
American Family Voices (AFN) sounds like an organization with solid, traditional values, doesn’t it? But AFV founder and president Mike Lux says, “funding for the organization [is] derived from ‘your classic progressive donors.’” For the record, Lux is a Democratic strategist and author of “The Progressive Revolution.”
Campaign for America’s Future (CFA) might sound pro-American, but they certainly don’t support a Constitutional Republic. Nearly 25 percent of the 131 people who founded the organization were active in the Democratic Socialists of America. According to their own website, CFA heavily promotes wealth redistribution, increased social welfare programs, and they strongly endorse the Green New Deal.
Faithful America sounds like an organization that supports Biblical values. Quite the contrary. It’s an effort to influence American churches with progressive thought. They seek to influence followers of Jesus to support government-run healthcare, expand “rights” for people entering the country illegally, and yes, redistribute wealth.
We’ll look at an impressively named PAC in a minute, but do you see that these Soros-funded organizations actually work against the principles set forth by our founders?
Is Soros a Talking Snake?
The Open Society Foundation website portrays George Soros as a caring philanthropist who fights for “freedom of expression, accountable government, and societies that promote justice and equality.” It sounds good on the surface, but if you’re an American Patriot who A) values the principles espoused in the United States Constitution, and B) has done any research into what Soros truly wants, hearing the George Soros story is kind of like listening to a talking serpent selling you on the idea that “you will surely not die” if you eat from that one tree in the middle of a garden.
Said another way, the ideas being peddled by Soros will not take America (or any other country) to a good place.
G. Edward Griffin, publisher of American Media, Inc., says these Soros-funded organizations, “have mission statements that sound high minded and worthy of support, but all of them are committed to goals and projects that are based on the leftist model of collectivism.”
Collapsing America from the ground up
Recently, Soros seems interested in backing candidates who apply the law rather than create it. He has funded many district attorney and other prosecuting candidates in at least ten states. Taking note of this, Cheryl K. Chumley wrote a piece for the Washington Times, titled, “George Soros, buying a district attorney near you.” In that piece, Chumley writes,
It’s one thing to exercise one’s First Amendment rights to support candidates with similar political leanings. It’s another thing entirely to try and collapse a limited government republic, from the bottom up, and implement, in its place, a judicial branch filled with people who twist the Bill of Rights into something it’s not, the Constitution into something it was never intended to be, and the rule of law into a mocking tool for far-left gain.
Soros unashamedly brags about taking advantage of loopholes to get his way. In the case of US elections, Soros has learned how to game the system by using PACs. And, he knows he can use those PACs to elect local district and county attorneys – those who decide how laws get interpreted and enforced.
Soros and the Virginia Elections
This most recent election was no different for Soros. In Virginia, he backed four candidates for county prosecutor positions, and all four won.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, “In addition to the $1.2 million in funds Soros spent on House of Delegates and Senate races in the commonwealth [of Virginia], he funneled an additional $2 million to four Democratic prosecutor candidates” [emphasis mine].
This was curious news to me. Why would Soros be concerned about county attorneys in Virginia? What’s more, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the winning candidate in Loudoun County, Buta Biberaj, received nearly $850,000 in donations from the Justice & Public Safety PAC. They also stated the PAC is “financed by Soros.”
At first I was skeptical. I thought, “Just how much of that $850,000 came from Soros? Is this merely over-dramatic journalism?” After all, I’ve become skeptical of broad-stroke, summative statements. You’ve probably seen it before. A hypothetical conservative candidate collects a hypothetical $8.50 each from 100,000 people, for a total of $850,000. Later, if it’s learned that just one of the $8.50 donors is a pedophile, suddenly it’s a scandal and news outlets everywhere report the candidate is being funded by pedophiles.
So yes, I’m skeptical of broad, summative statements. Therefore, to address my curiosity, I did some research into this particular PAC. Here’s what I found.
The Justice & Public Safety PAC was founded and incorporated in February, 2017 by Jonathan S. Berkon, a Democratic election lawyer with Perkins Coie.If you don’t know, Perkins Coie is the main legal counsel for the Democratic National Committee. Also note the timing: Donald Trump had been inaugurated only a month earlier. I then dug a little deeper and found something else:
According to Federal Election Commission records, the ONLY person who donated money to the Justice & Public Safety PAC was George Soros. I had to look twice, but my eyes were not lying: Soros was the ONLY person who gave money to the PAC.
I confess, I’ve been hearing “George Soros = bad” ever since Obama began his run for the Presidency. I heard the name so much, I’d fight rolling my eyes whenever someone mentioned him.
I confess and now repent. Right there in black and white, in the Federal Election Commission records, George Soros is listed as the ONLY person who donated to the Justice & Public Safety PAC. And he gave them $1,085,000.00.
This is the new state of politics? Hire a Democratic election lawyer from Perkins Coie to create a Super PAC and be the only person who donates? Since when does ONE person get to fund a PAC just to circumvent election laws, and give $850,000 to a single candidate? Oh, I forgot. It’s George Soros, and he’s exploiting loopholes.
Soros buys attorneys in three contiguous counties
Buta Biberaj was not the only commonwealth’s attorney who won using Soros’ money. Steve Descano (Fairfax County) received more than $600,000 from the Justice & Public Safety PAC (aka George Soros), and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (Arlington County) received nearly $400,000.
Questions: Why is Soros buying these attorney seats in Virginia? Why give $600,000 to an extremely inexperienced Descano when the incumbent was an experienced liberal attorney? What upcoming legal decisions will be on the table in Virginia that Soros wants decided his way?
When interviewed by LoudounNow about why Soros would pour so much money into her campaign, Biberaj said the super PAC was only supporting the message she was already promoting. I say she can claim that all she wants, but she won her seat by a very slim margin, so without Soros’ $850,000, she’d be shopping her resume about now. She owes him and she knows it. The question remains: What does Soros want in Virginia?
Violations of law?
By law, Super PACs are not supposed to coordinate activities with political parties or candidates. As I looked over the Justice & Public Safety PAC’s disbursements in their their FEC filings, I saw a lot of activity that would require coordination with candidates. Expenditures like $27,000 for video production just don’t happen without contacting a candidate’s campaign.
Also, if super PACs are not supposed to be coordinating with candidates and vice versa, why does the Justice & Public Safety PAC Facebook page say it is “Authorized by Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, Candidate for Commonwealth’s Attorney”? Here’s a screen shot I captured on Nov. 14, 2019:
Justice & Public Safety PAC Facebook Page
I believe Soros and his shell organizations are crossing some lines here, but no doubt Soros can claim immunity because of his shell game using super PACS to violate federal election laws.
The problem? Soros will laugh it off because nobody will do anything about it. And even if they did, would the attorneys who got elected get removed from office? Hell no.
If I may borrow a line from William Shakespeare, it seems something is rotten in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
And also in the enforcement of our Federal Election Laws.
I don’t think I’m done talking about this guy. More on Mr. Soros in the days to come.
Note: Tracy Beanz contributed to the research for this article.
BY EMEL AKAN December 29, 2020
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration scored a victory against the regime in Beijing this year through its “Clean Network” campaign that booted Huawei Technologies Co. out of critical telecommunications infrastructure in many countries.
The effort, while not well-publicized, secured an array of commitments from governments to exclude untrusted vendors from their fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks. As of this month, more than 50 nations, representing over two-thirds of the world’s economy, and 180 telecom companies had joined the “Clean Network” initiative led by the U.S. government.
The alliance includes 26 of the 27 EU member states, as well as technologically advanced countries such as Japan, Israel, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Canada, New Zealand, and India.
This triumph for the U.S. government seemed unthinkable at the beginning of this year, as the Chinese telecom giant, a dominant player in the global 5G market, seemed unbeatable.
For years, the United States had sought to convince its allies to shun Chinese vendors such as Huawei and ZTE on national security grounds, and the Trump administration had warned about the risks of reliance on Chinese technologies, which were deeply embedded in the next generation of global telecommunications. But those efforts had failed to check Huawei.
In February, Huawei announced that it had 91 commercial 5G contracts outside of China, with 47 of the contracts in Europe and 20 in Asia. In January, for example, the UK declared that it would allow Huawei to supply 5G equipment, sparking tensions between London and Washington.
“The U.S. is repeatedly pursuing its allied countries to ban Huawei from developing 5G but most of them have denied doing so,” Huawei stated on its website in February.
To turn the tide, the State Department in April launched a campaign requiring a “clean path” for all standalone 5G network traffic entering and exiting U.S. diplomatic facilities, as outlined in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The Clean Path was the first of several Clean Network strategic moves that the administration rolled out to keep U.S. critical data and networks safe from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The following month, the Commerce Department tightened export controls on Huawei, calling it a security threat. The Pentagon later blacklisted the company because of its ties to the Chinese military.
As part of the plan, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced in May that it would build the world’s most advanced 5-nanometer chip fabrication facility in Arizona, an important milestone in securing the semiconductor supply chain and a safe 5G network for the United States and its partners.
The Clean Network seeks to address what the U.S. State Department describes as “the long-term threat to data privacy, security, human rights and principled collaboration posed to the free world from authoritarian malign actors.”
The State Department conducted international outreach to explain U.S. actions on Huawei and urged other countries to take similar measures to secure their 5G networks and to protect their citizens’ personal information. Keith Krach, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, was the person behind the effort.
A former businessman and Silicon Valley veteran, Krach coined the term Clean Network and led the initiative to take away Huawei’s momentum by unifying allies. And within a few months, the network garnered overwhelming international support.
Today, the vast majority of EU, NATO, and OECD members embrace the Clean Network program.
“The Clean Network’s momentum turned the tide on Huawei and the CCP’s 5G master plan,” Krach told The Epoch Times.
“It proved that China Inc. is beatable. And in the process, we exposed their biggest weakness—its lack of trust.”
Backbone of Surveillance State
The biggest weakness of Chinese companies such as Huawei “is that nobody trusts them,” according to Krach. And this trust issue has become a strategic tool for the U.S. government.
Since China passed the National Intelligence Act in June 2017, all Chinese citizens and companies have been legally obliged to turn over any information or data to the communist regime upon request. Huawei is the backbone of the CCP’s surveillance state, according to Krach, and for years, the regime has strong-armed governments around the world to purchase its 5G infrastructure and services.
Epoch Times Photo U.S. Undersecretary for Economic Affairs Keith Krach speaks during a meeting on Clean Network in Brasilia, Brazil on Nov. 11, 2020. (Courtesy of Keith Krach) That’s the 800-pound elephant in the room, Krach says.
“Countries and companies are terrified of the CCP’s doctrine of intimidation, retaliation, and retribution. And that, basically, is a bully. When you confront a bully, they back down. And they really back down if you have your friends by your side,” he said.
The growing coalition is a “security blanket” for countries and telecom operators to guard against Beijing’s retaliation.
Following the U.S. government’s campaign, Huawei’s deals outside of China fell to “probably a dozen” from 91, according to Krach.
So far, 27 of the 30 NATO and 31 of the 37 OECD members have joined the Clean Network.
In a major win for the Trump administration, the UK announced in July its plans to ban Huawei from future 5G networks, reversing its January decision. The mobile providers in the country will be barred from buying new Huawei equipment after Dec. 31.
It took a while, but the tide also turned in Germany, Krach said, as Berlin prepares legislation that would impose tough new restrictions on telecom equipment providers and make it next to impossible to include Huawei in the buildout of the country’s 5G networks.
“We’ve turned the tide on the Chinese Communist Party’s 5G master plan,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote on Twitter on Dec. 23.
“The U.S. proudly joins our EU, [Three Seas Summit], [NATO], and [OECD] partners and allies in the Clean Network to counter CCP malign influence. Alliances built on trust will always prevail against surveillance states.”
Beijing has been furious over the U.S. government’s Clean Network campaign.
In September, the China Daily newspaper, which is owned by the CCP, criticized Pompeo for declaring victory against the Chinese regime.
“The bid to strangle Huawei shows the ruthless method the U.S. administration is using to hold onto the U.S. hegemony in technology,” the paper stated.
In August, Pompeo announced the expansion of the Clean Network program to include clean carriers (ensuring no untrusted carriers, such as those from China, are connected to the network), clean apps and app stores, clean cloud services (protecting Americans’ data), and clean cable (ensuring underwater cables connecting the United States to the global internet are protected). As part of the effort, President Donald Trump signed in August two executive orders to address the threats posed by Chinese-owned popular mobile apps TikTok and WeChat.
Clean Network has also added a number of industry leaders as clean companies, including Oracle, HP, NEC, Fujitsu, and Cisco.
Bringing in clean companies to the coalition was a strategic aspect of expanding the value proposition, according to Krach. These clean companies need to be able to trust the 5G networks in a country in order to invest or expand their operations. If they can’t, they will look elsewhere.
“Announcing that you’re a clean country is going to send a great signal to the U.S. private sector that this is a good place to invest.”
Krach defines the 5G effort as a “beachhead” in a wider economic battle against the CCP. He believes the alliance of democracies is the “golden key,” as it lays the groundwork for many other areas such as clean currency, clean data, and clean Internet of Things.
Epoch Times Photo U.S. Undersecretary for Economic Affairs Keith Krach, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) founder Morris Chang attend a banquet for the U.S. delegation in Taipei, Taiwan on Sept. 18, 2020. (Courtesy of Keith Krach) The next areas outside of technology have already begun, according to Krach, with clean infrastructure and clean financing, which is called the Blue Dot Network to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Other initiatives focus on clean minerals, clean supply chains, and clean labor practices.
Transatlantic Alliance For the past few months, Krach and his team traveled to Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America to secure commitments from governments, telecom operators, and multinational companies to join the coalition.
The integration of the EU 5G Clean Toolbox as part of the Clean Network during his visit to Europe in late September marks a turning point for the U.S. government.
In January 2020, the European Commission, together with EU member states, released the EU Toolbox to ensure secure 5G networks are deployed across Europe.
On Sept. 30, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton and Krach issued a joint statement highlighting their commitment to shared principles on 5G security. They also announced the synergies between the Clean Network and the EU Toolbox. So any country that implements the EU Toolbox will be considered as part of the Clean Network.
“The 5G Toolbox serves as a reference for telco operators’ board of directors, who are required to make the decision on 5G suppliers,” Breton said in the joint statement.
“If they choose a high-risk 5G supplier and something happens, the board members may be liable.”
The same day, NATO also threw its support behind the U.S. government’s campaign, stressing the importance of having a secure 5G Clean NATO Network, which is non-fractured.
Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana announced that the majority of NATO countries have committed to joining the Clean Network. Geoana said that the alliance couldn’t afford to have some countries using trusted vendors, while others use untrusted vendors. He also emphasized the importance of having secure civilian 5G infrastructure during peacetime and wartime.
In October, the Three Seas Initiative, a forum of 12 EU states in Central and Eastern Europe, also announced support for the Clean Network at the annual conference in Estonia.
Krach also traveled to Latin America in November to expand the alliance, securing commitments from Brazil, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic to join the network.
NATO members Turkey, Iceland, and Hungary (also in the EU) are still not part of the Clean Network.
“I think you’ll continue to see more countries, more companies, and more telcos” joining this rapidly growing coalition, Krach said.
Georgia Democrat Senate candidate Jon Ossoff tweeted that his followers should follow China’s state-run news outlet in 2012, after working as a national security aide to Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA).
On November 7, 2012, Ossoff said, referring to the annual gathering of Chinese Communist Party delegates, “Esp. during 18th Party Congress, #follow @XHNews (Xinhua – Chinese state media). #ff.”
The hashtag “#ff” in social media lexicon has been used to flag other Twitter accounts the tweet author thinks should be followed.
It was at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that Xi Jinping — now China’s president — was elected as general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.
Ossoff’s tweet, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, came about three months after he left working as a staffer for Johnson.
According to Politifact, Ossoff received a top-secret security clearance in March 2012 and staffed Johnson for all work related to the National Defense Authorization Act before leaving in mid-August 2012.
Both Republican and Democrat U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern about Xinhua News Agency’s operations in the United States.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), a Navy reservist and China hawk, in a January 2020 letter to then-Attorney General William Barr wrote that it was “extremely troubling” that the agency had not yet registered as a foreign agent, as reported by Axios.
Axios noted that Xinhua operates bureaus in major cities across the U.S. and that the bipartisan U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission’s 2017 report stated “Xinhua serves some functions of an intelligence agency by gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese government.”
“Xinhua and the Chinese Communist Party have deep, longstanding ties,” Banks said in the letter. “There have been no reports that the Xinhua News Agency has filed as a foreign agent.”
Ossoff has tried to defend against his film production company Insight TWI receiving payments from PCCW, a Chinese media company partly owned by the Chinese state-owned Unicom and a pro-Beijing businessman in Hong Kong.
Ossoff did not include the payments when he first filed candidate financial disclosures in May, but then quietly included them two months later, after the Georgia Senate primary. His campaign has called the omission of the payments from PCCW a “paperwork oversight.”
The Washington Free Beacon also reported that Ossoff’s wealthy father, who has “bankrolled” his son’s political career, met with Chinese “dignitaries” after purchasing a 60-foot yacht from a China-based shipbuilder tied to Communist Party officials.
Incumbent Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), who Ossoff is challenging in Georgia’s January 5 run-off election, said Monday during an interview with Hugh Hewitt the payment issue showed “bad judgment” and made him a target for China.
“This shows bad judgment, and it’s a real dangerous thing on the back of the Swalwell scandal and also the Hunter Biden scandal. It shows what China’s doing: they’re finding these young impressionable liberals and they’re developing strong relationships,” Perdue said.
Excerpt from article: Twitter user @anon_fa_mous recently put together an excellent compilation of videos and other evidence showing the blatant fraud that has occurred during the 2020 election cycle. All videos, pictures and captions were taken from their account. Follow them here. Be sure to report all evidence of election fraud here: djt45.co/stopfraud. See the videos.
BY TYLER DURDEN TUESDAY, DEC 29, 2020 - 18:05 Authored by Tyler O'Neil via PJMedia.com,
On Monday, a panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D-N.Y.) COVID-19 orders placing strict limits on houses of worship in hot spots.
The 2nd Circuit panel agreed with the Supreme Court that Cuomo’s order likely does not satisfy the high standard of strict scrutiny and therefore violates the First Amendment.
“No public interest is served by maintaining an unconstitutional policy when constitutional alternatives are available to achieve the same goal,” Judge Michael Park wrote in the opinion.
“The restrictions challenged here specially and disproportionately burden religious exercise, and thus ’strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.’ Such a direct and severe constitutional violation weighs heavily in favor of granting injunctive relief.”
In the 3-0 decision, the panel upheld the claims of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, the Orthodox Jewish group Agudath Israel of America, and two synagogues. The ruling enjoined Cuomo’s October 6 order capping attendance at “houses of worship.”
Cuomo capped attendance at either 10 people or 25 percent capacity, whichever is lesser, in “red” zones, and 25 people or 33 percent capacity in “orange” zones, even in buildings that seat hundreds.
While previous rulings had supported Cuomo’s order, the Supreme Court granted an injunction against the order by a 5-4 majority.
“In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, we hold that the Order’s regulation of ‘houses of worship’ is subject to strict scrutiny and that its fixed capacity limits are not narrowly tailored to stem the spread of COVID-19. Appellants have established irreparable harm caused by the fixed capacity limits, and the public interest favors granting injunctive relief,” the 2nd Circuit panel ruled.
In the opinion, Park noted that Cuomo “has not asserted that his categorization of businesses as ‘essential’ or ’non-essential’ was based on any assessment of COVID-19 transmission risk.”
He also argued that Cuomo did not use data or compare religious worship with “essential” activities.
Cuomo has claimed that the Supreme Court’s ruling had no practical effect because some restrictions were lifted as COVID-19 outbreaks eased.
Avi Schick, a lawyer for Agudath Israel, said Monday’s decision “will be felt way beyond the COVID context. It is a clear statement … that government can’t disfavor religious conduct merely because it sees no value in religious practice.”
Randy Mastro, the diocese’s lawyer, said the diocese was “gratified,” and will welcome parishioners to mass “under strict protocols” that keep them safe.
BY PETR SVAB December 29, 2020
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, this year there’s likely to be a mix of hope and trepidation in the air as President Donald Trump and tens of millions of his supporters are convinced that a decisive share of the votes are tainted by election fraud and shouldn’t be counted.
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.
Sidney Powell retweeted this article: https://twitter.com/sidneypowell1
Sidney Powell retweeted this post: https://twitter.com/sidneypowell1
BY MIMI NGUYEN LY December 29, 2020
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Tuesday upheld a Trump administration rule that requires hospitals to disclose the prices they negotiate with insurers for a range of health tests and procedures.
The 2-0 decision by the appeals court means that American patients will have access to hospital pricing information starting on Jan. 1, 2021, helping them find the lowest costs and the highest quality of care when deciding on treatment.
“This transformative hospital price transparency rule has been fought at every step by the swamp and defenders of the status quo,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement.
“Today’s ruling should reassure the American people that President Donald J. Trump refuses to bow to the influence of special interests who would prefer to keep patients in the dark. This initiative is just one in a series of rules that will bring unprecedented price transparency to all elements of healthcare,” she added.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the transparency rules in November 2019, calling on hospitals to make public the often-secret rates that they negotiate with insurance companies for all services, drugs, and supplies. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement at the time that hospitals must make public all standard hospital charges in a single data file.
The moves came as a result of Trump’s signing of an executive order in June 2019 over price transparency.
Hospitals, insurer organizations, and advocacy groups objected to the rules, and said that the Trump administration did not have authority to require the disclosures, which they held to be trade secrets. The hospitals also disputed that the policy would benefit consumers and lead to lower costs, arguing that compliance would instead be too burdensome and interfere with their care for patients.
The finalization of the rule prompted the American Hospital Association (AHA) to file a legal challenge. They argued that the White House didn’t have the authority to make the rule and in doing so had violated the First Amendment in its creation, and had acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner.
A federal judge ruled on June 23 that the Trump administration rules were legal. But the groups appealed on Oct. 15.
In the appeal, the groups said that the price transparency rules would pose a “herculean” and costly task of compiling health care costs, while reducing competition and causing confusion about patients’ out-of-pocket expenses.
Circuit Judge David Tatel, however, said concerns about the burdens “miss the mark,” and pointed to HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s findings that greater disclosures would benefit the “vast majority” of consumers and likely result in lower—not higher—prices.
“The Secretary weighed the rule’s costs and benefits and made a reasonable judgment that the benefits of easing the burden for consumers justified the added burdens imposed on hospitals,” Tatel wrote.
The latest decision upholds the June 23 ruling by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols.
Melinda Hatton, the AHA’s general counsel, said the group was disappointed and hopes that a potential Biden administration would revise the rule and exercise “enforcement discretion” until the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic runs its course.
On Twitter, Azar praised the decision. “Big win for American patients today. The DC Circuit ruling is another major victory for President Trump’s transformative healthcare agenda. Starting January 1, Americans will have access to the actual prices paid for the most common hospital services,” he wrote.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supported the hospital groups, saying the rule could cause hospitals to demand higher prices for their services if they saw other hospitals charging more.
The case is American Hospital Association et al v. Azar, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 20-5193.
Janita Kan and Reuters contributed to this report.
December 29, 2020
A Top U.S. Attorney who was widely criticized for his September announcement of an investigation into discarded Pennsylvania election ballots has resigned from the Justice Department on Tuesday afternoon.
“For the past three years, I have had the great fortune to work with the highly skilled attorneys and staff in the Middle District of Pennsylvania,” David Freed said in a statement on Tuesday. “It is an office blessed with experienced and dedicated leaders, and colleagues who truly understand the importance of working together for the benefit of their fellow citizens.”
The following is the statement from The Justice Department on Freed’s departure.
United States Attorney David J. Freed Announces Resignation HARRISBURG – United States Attorney David J. Freed, of Camp Hill, PA, has announced his resignation effective midnight January 1, 2021. Mr. Freed is departing the office after serving for more than three years as the chief federal law enforcement officer for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which consists of 33 counties in Central and Northeastern Pennsylvania and has offices in Harrisburg, Scranton, and Williamsport. Mr. Freed was nominated as United States Attorney by Senators Pat Toomey and Bob Casey, appointed by President Donald Trump in September, 2017, confirmed by the United States Senate in November, 2017, and sworn in as United States Attorney on November 27th, 2017.
Mr. Freed was born in West Chester, PA, and raised first in Pottsville, PA, and later Camp Hill, PA, where he resides with his family. He is a graduate of Camp Hill High School, Washington and Lee University, and the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law. Prior to his appointment as United States Attorney, Mr. Freed served for twelve years as the District Attorney of Cumberland County.
“I have been enormously privileged to be able to serve my fellow citizens, first as a young prosecutor in York County, then later in several positions in Cumberland County including 12 years as District Attorney, and finally as the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. I have done my best to be thoughtful and consistent, and to provide justice to my fellow citizens in a fair, effective and efficient manner. I am grateful to President Trump and Senators Toomey and Casey for the opportunity to serve; and to former Attorneys General Sessions and Barr for their leadership of the Department.”
“I have had the incredible opportunity to work with our brave men and women in law enforcement nearly every day for the past 20 years and continue to be amazed by their commitment to their fellow citizens. I have witnessed first-hand the fortitude and grace of victims of crime, and have taken to heart the awesome responsibility of speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
“For the past three years, I have had the great fortune to work with the highly skilled attorneys and staff in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. It is an office blessed with experienced and dedicated leaders, and colleagues who truly understand the importance of working together for the benefit of their fellow citizens. It was not difficult to recognize, frankly before I even started, that the office was efficient and productive, and was in need of very little change. More than anything over the past three years, I have endeavored above all to tell the story of the great accomplishments of the office. While the public words are mine, the accomplishments belong to them.”
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania consists of three distinct Divisions: Criminal, Civil, and Administrative. The accomplishments of each Division during Mr. Freed’s tenure are many and varied.
Criminal
Foremost among the office’s accomplishments during Mr. Freed’s tenure has been the continued commitment to working together with state and local partners in an effort to reduce violent crimes in targeted areas throughout the District. As part of the Department of Justice priority programs Project Safe Neighborhoods and Project Guardian, the office has worked hand in hand with District Attorneys, state and local law enforcement and community partners in target areas including the cities of Harrisburg, Wilkes Barre, Williamsport, and York to address gun violence at a micro level. I am happy to report that our efforts have been successful as reflected by recent statistics showing significant reductions in gun violence throughout the District. In addition, the office pursued and successfully prosecuted numerous priority cases in the areas of public corruption, drug trafficking, drug delivery resulting in death, drug distribution and illegal prescribing by medical professionals, fraud, sex trafficking and exploitation of minors, environmental crimes and illegal immigration.
Civil
The office’s Civil Division has wide areas of responsibility, from defending federal agencies and employees in civil matters to immigration, discrimination matters, and prisoner litigation. Following a reorganization of the office’s affirmative civil efforts, the Affirmative Civil Enforcement (ACE) Unit was formed to allow a dedicated team of attorneys and investigators to attack fraud against the government. The ACE unit has enjoyed nearly immediate success, bringing cases and negotiating the return of millions of taxpayer dollars that individuals and businesses had obtained by fraudulent means. The Civil Division continues to focus upon important polling place access discrimination cases throughout the district with the goal of ensuring that every eligible citizen will be able to cast a vote regardless of any disability. With a federal prison population that is larger than all but two other districts in the nation, the dedicated prisoner litigation attorneys and paralegals handle a constant stream of cases from the district’s federal correctional institutions with extremely favorable outcomes.
Administrative
Notwithstanding the current pandemic and the longest government shutdown in United States history, the office’s Administrative Division has been exceedingly productive during the past three years. Chief among these accomplishments has been the institution of a yearly strategic planning process including individual employee self-assessments and clear yearly goals updated annually and monitored throughout the year. In addition, the support of the Administrative Division has allowed the Financial Litigation Unit to collect well in excess of the District’s budget each year, and allowed the District to maintain its position as the one of the most productive medium sized offices in the nation.
Upon Mr. Freed’s departure, First Assistant United States Attorney Bruce D. Brandler will assume the position of United States Attorney pursuant to the Vacancies Reform Act. Mr. Brandler has been with the office for more than 30 years, and previously served as United States Attorney from 2016 to 2017.
Freed previously made massive headlines in September when he took steps announcing the this office was investigating the discarding of mail-in ballots in Luzerne Country.
Freed’s resignation is just another question mark in the massive attempt to cover up election fraud across the country.
Other U.S. Attorneys were upset that Freed opened up the case against election fraud, due to the nature of the DOJ’s lack of standing wanting to not investigate the issues being reported across the nation.
This is a developing story.
Mayor Rudolph J. Giuliani, the Trump campaign’s lead attorney, today announced that the campaign filed a petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that allowed over 50,000 illegal absentee ballots in violation of Article II of the U.S. Constitution and Wisconsin law. The filing seeks expedited consideration before the January 6 Congressional review of the Electoral College votes. This marks the second Constitutional challenge to illegal mail voting filed by the Campaign, following a petition from Pennsylvania filed on December 20.
According to President Trump’s lead Wisconsin attorney, Jim Troupis: “Regrettably, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in their 4-3 decision, refused to address the merits of our claim. This ‘Cert Petition’ asks them to address our claims, which, if allowed, would change the outcome of the election in Wisconsin.” Troupis noted, “Three members of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice, agreed with many of the President’s claims in written dissents from that court’s December 14 order.”
Professor John Eastman, a constitutional scholar at the Claremont Institute, also noted: “The petition challenging the decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to allow partisan state and local election officials to ignore key anti-fraud provisions of Wisconsin law is extremely persuasive. The federal constitutional issues raised by the case cannot be more clear. Article II of the Constitution, as interpreted in Bush v. Gore, assigns to the ‘legislature’ the plenary power to determine the manner of choosing presidential electors, not executive officials, un-elected bureaucrats, or even the state’s judiciary. That authority was eviscerated in Wisconsin, resulting in more than 50,000 illegal ballots being cast and counted.”
The Trump Petition raises a number of issues, including:
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More than 28,000 votes were counted from people who failed to provide identification by abusing the state’s “indefinitely confined” status, including two Biden electors.
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Nearly 6,000 absentee ballots were counted that were contained in incomplete and altered ballot envelopes that the Wisconsin statutes expressly forbid.
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More than 17,000 ballots were collected by hand, in direct contravention of the statutes, in Democrat-sponsored events in Madison in September and October.
Georgia Has 460,000 Absentee Ballots Still Missing Chain of Custody Documentation Required by Law – Since most absentee ballots went to Biden, will Georgia move to the Trump column as a result? e reported on Saturday that Tiffany Morgan at the Tennessee Star reported:
With eleven days until Georgia’s U.S. runoff election, a large majority of the state’s counties have failed to produce chain of custody documents for some 460,000 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes that were counted in the state’s November 3 general election as requested by The Georgia Star News…
…In order to account for the secure whereabouts for absentee ballots left in drop boxes across the state, the Georgia Election Code Emergency Rule approved by State Election Board on July 1, 2020, required that every county is responsible for documenting the transfer of every batch of absentee ballots picked up at drop boxes and delivered to the county election offices with ballot transfer forms. The forms are required to be signed and dated, with time of pick up by the collection team upon pick up, and then signed, dated, with time of delivery by the registrar or designee upon receipt and accepted.
This was all reported in our post on Saturday:
Will Georgia move to the Trump column as a result of nearly a half a million ballots not having the required documentation per the law? These ballots are of course ballots that Joe Biden received in the historically corrupt election of 2020.
COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Channel 2 Action News has learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has finished the signature audit in Cobb County over the November election.
Earlier in the month, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his office had investigated credible allegations that Cobb County improperly performed signature matches during the June primary, so he ordered a signature audit for the November election in that county.
Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Gray spoke with Raffensperger late Tuesday afternoon, who said there were only two mismatched signatures among the more than 15,000 votes in the audit.
Content Continues Below
The audit was a first of its kind in Georgia.
President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia by roughly 12,000 votes.
Following President Donald Trump’s November loss, top Republican leaders, including the president, made calls for the same type of audit.
Georgia county elections offices had already undergone a hand recount audit, and a machine recount at the president’s request before dozens of lawsuits with unsubstantiated fraud claims were thrown out of courts across the country.
A claim about Cobb County signature match surfaced in one of the lawsuits. So Raffensperger ordered the audit to clear the air over claims of voter fraud and misinformation.
The limited signature audit required teams of GBI agents and state election investigators to examine about 15,000 absentee envelope signatures, which were separated from the actual ballot when they were processed. That ensures a secret ballot, a right that’s cemented in the state constitution. Signatures were matched twice during the ballot count process.
The signatures were then compared to public state records, including driving services forms.
COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Channel 2 Action News has learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has finished the signature audit in Cobb County over the November election.
Earlier in the month, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his office had investigated credible allegations that Cobb County improperly performed signature matches during the June primary, so he ordered a signature audit for the November election in that county.
Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Gray spoke with Raffensperger late Tuesday afternoon, who said there were only two mismatched signatures among the more than 15,000 votes in the audit.
The audit was a first of its kind in Georgia.
President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia by roughly 12,000 votes.
Following President Donald Trump’s November loss, top Republican leaders, including the president, made calls for the same type of audit.
Georgia county elections offices had already undergone a hand recount audit, and a machine recount at the president’s request before dozens of lawsuits with unsubstantiated fraud claims were thrown out of courts across the country.
A claim about Cobb County signature match surfaced in one of the lawsuits. So Raffensperger ordered the audit to clear the air over claims of voter fraud and misinformation.
The limited signature audit required teams of GBI agents and state election investigators to examine about 15,000 absentee envelope signatures, which were separated from the actual ballot when they were processed. That ensures a secret ballot, a right that’s cemented in the state constitution. Signatures were matched twice during the ballot count process.
The signatures were then compared to public state records, including driving services forms.
Thousands of residents in Aspen, Colorado, are without heat after what authorities say was an "intentional attack" on local gas service.
According to a Tuesday report from ABC News, the temperature in Aspen is expected to fall to just 2 degrees Tuesday night.
What are the details? Authorities say that the attack — "coordinated acts of vandalism" — took place Saturday night and impacted at least three area Black Hills Energy locations.
The outlet reported, "At one of the targeted sites, police said they found the words 'Earth first' scrawled, and investigators were looking into whether the self-described 'radical environmental group' Earth First! was involved."
As work crews continued to restore gas service across the city, authorities began handing out electric-powered space heaters to residents without heat service on Tuesday as a storm is expected to roll in this week and dump an additional eight inches of snow on the region.
Work crews were forced to visit each gas meter on an individual basis, manually turn them off, and relight pilot lights in order to restore services. It wasn't just homes impacted by the attack — authorities said that businesses including area hotels and restaurants were forced to close their doors following the apparent sabotage.
In a statement, Aspen Assistant Police Chief Bill Linn said that the vandals appear to have had "some familiarity" with the natural gas line system.
"They tampered with the flow lines," he revealed. "They turned off gas lines."
Linn — who is also working with the FBI as it investigates the attack — added that physical evidence recovered at the three scenes included footprints. The three locations did not have security cameras, Linn said.
What else? About 3,500 customers were impacted by the outage. It remains unclear how long it will take crews to restore service to all customers.
In a statement, Pitkin County Commissioner Patti Clapper added, "It's almost, to me, an act of terrorism. It's trying to destroy a mountain community at the height of the holiday season. This wasn't a national gas glitch. This was a purposeful act. Someone is looking to make a statement of some kind."
BY ZACHARY STIEBER December 29, 2020 Republicans should override President Donald Trump’s veto of the defense funding bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday.
While blocking a push to approve the Trump-backed, $2,000 stimulus check bill, the top Republican in Congress urged colleagues to follow the House’s lead in overriding Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021.
“President Trump has rightly noted this year’s defense bill doesn’t contain every provision that we Republicans would have wanted. I’m confident our Democratic colleagues feel the same way. But that is the case every year. And yet, for 59 consecutive years and counting, Washington has put our differences aside, found common ground, and passed the annual defense bill,” McConnell said on the Senate floor in Washington.
“I urge my colleagues to support this legislation one more time when we vote tomorrow,” he added.
Trump last week followed through on his threats and vetoed the act, in part because it did not include the removal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The section shields some technology companies, such as Google and Facebook, from most liability lawsuits.
“Unfortunately, the Act fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military’s history, and contradicts efforts by my Administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions,” Trump said. “It is a ‘gift’ to China and Russia.”
The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the ability to override presidential vetoes. It requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber.
The House late Monday voted 322–87 to override the veto. A majority of Republicans and Democrats voted to override Trump.
“The president has exercised his constitutional prerogative. Now, madam speaker, it’s up to us. Our troops, the country, indeed, the world, is watching to see what we will do, whether we can tune out other differences and still come together to support the men and women of the military and American national security,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said on the House floor before the vote.
“I really want members to understand the president vetoed this because of something that isn’t in the bill, and was never going to be in the bill. Something totally unrelated to national security, and something that we were not going to do in any event,” added Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
Before the Senate opened the session Tuesday, Trump called Republican leadership “weak and tied,” and said he opposed portions of the bill that will rename forts.
“A disgraceful act of cowardice and total submission by weak people to Big Tech. Negotiate a better Bill, or get better leaders, NOW! Senate should not approve NDAA until fixed!!!” he said.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told colleagues he would vote to override Trump’s veto, saying the act “takes a strong approach to counter the threats posed by our adversaries around the world.”
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a military veteran who chairs the Senate Armed Forces Committee, described himself as disappointed when Trump vetoed the bill.
“I share President Trump’s frustration about section 230. I know it’s a complicated thing. The majority of people in America don’t know what that’s all about. Section 230 is something that has nothing to do with the military, nothing at all,” he said. “That would be found in the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee is chaired by Senator Lindsey Graham. He does a great job chairing that. That’s where any kind of reform in section 230 should come from.”
BY MARK TAPSCOTT December 29, 2020 All of the nation’s 25 counties with the highest number of officially reported cases of CCP virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, have rigorous mask mandates in place, as do 97 of the top 100, according to a new study by the Heritage Foundation.
“From October 1 through December 13, the U.S. saw an increase of 8.8 million confirmed COVID-19 cases,” the conservative foundation’s Center for Data Analysis (CDA) reported in a study made public Monday.
“Of the 25 counties with the highest new case totals, all 25 had a mask mandate, and all but one implemented their directive prior to October; 21 of the 25 counties implemented mandates prior to August,” the CDA study said.
“Of the 100 counties with the most confirmed cases during this period, 97 had either a county-level mask mandate, a state-level mandate, or both,” CDA said.
“Among this group of 97 counties, 87 began their mandate before October. In the remaining 10 counties, five issued their mask mandate in October, and five did so in November.
A number of the mandates that took effect in October or November represented even tighter controls than had previously been in force in those counties, according to CDA.
The 100 counties represent slightly more than 39 percent of all U.S. CCP virus cases and account for just under 40 percent of the nation’s total population.
The study was based on data supplied by USA Facts, a nonpartisan data compiler used by the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), among other federal agencies.
The study authors claimed that “these findings do not deny the efficacy of mask-wearing per se. Nor should they discourage the practice. Instead, they point to the inadequacy of public health strategies that rely predominantly on lockdowns and mask mandates.
“Governments should undertake more effective interventions. These include adopting better measures to protect nursing home residents, enabling nationwide screening through the widespread use of rapid self-tests, and establishing voluntary isolation centers where infected people can recover, rather than exposing their families to infection.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden has expressed enthusiasm for a national mask mandate if he becomes President, but such an approach would encounter bipartisan opposition in Congress, according to Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.).
“Aside from the fact that a nationwide mask mandate is unconstitutional, I think the American people are smart enough know when they need to wear a mask and when they don’t. We can all walk and chew gum at the same time,” Budd told The Epoch Times.
There are currently 14 Members of Congress who are also physicians, including 11 Republicans and three Democrats.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), a practicing anesthesiologist, told The Epoch Times Tuesday that he would also oppose a mandate.
“I would oppose it on two grounds. One is constitutional grounds and the other is scientific grounds. There just really is no evidence that a mandate absolutely would make a huge difference,” Harris said.
“Social distancing and protecting the vulnerable might be much more important than mask mandates, and I’ve signed the Great Barrington Declaration because I think that is probably the way we should begin thinking about this pandemic,” Harris continued.
He was referring to the statement made public in October declaring that, “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health.”
The statement claimed current lockdown policies are also “leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.”
The statement was written by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Sunetra Gupta and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who wrote it together while at a meeting at the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Since it was posted on the Internet on Oct. 4, 39,544 medical practitioners have signed the Great Barrington Declaration, as have 13,084 medical and public health scientists.
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), a urologist, told The Epoch Times Tuesday that he’s “worn masks in the operating room for 30-plus years. They’re annoying, their scratchy and the first thing I do when I walk out of the operating room is pop off my mask.”
Even so, Murphy said, “while it is by no means perfect, it is one of the pieces of the puzzle that we’re using, to use my surgeon’s talk, ‘to get the hell out of this epidemic.’”
Murphy acknowledged that wearing masks can be inconvenient and “may give some people a false sense of security, but I have yet to see anybody die from a mask and why not, if it could give a small chance of helping somebody else out, why not just wear one?”
Even so, Murphy said he opposes a mandatory national mask edict. “I don’t believe there should be a mask mandate any more than I believe there should be a vaccine mandate.”
Spokesmen for the three House Democrats — representatives Ami Bera of California, Paul Ruiz of California, and Kim Schrier of Washington — who are physicians did not respond to The Epoch Times request for comments on the Heritage study or a potential national mask mandate.
Contact Mark Tapscott at [email protected]
Sidney Powell retweeted this post: https://twitter.com/sidneypowell1
BY JACK PHILLIPS December 29, 2020 An appeals court ruled that a congressional minority has the standing to enforce requests for government information.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in favor of a group of House Democrats who serve on the House Oversight and Reform Committee who wanted to obtain records from the General Services Administration (GSA). They had sought to get information about the federal government’s lease of the Old Post Office building in the city to the Trump Organization that was used for the Trump International Hotel.
The majority of the court ruled that the House members had standing and had suffered injury from the agency’s refusal to provide the information after they had demanded it. They said that lawmakers can resort to the courts to enforce a law known as the seven-member rule, which dates back to 1928.
“It is concrete—the request was made and straightforwardly denied; the Requesters have been and remain empty-handed,” Judge Patricia Millett wrote (pdf). “The injury is personal and particularized to the Requesters themselves, not to any other legislators, to a legislative body, or even to their Committee seats.”
Millett, an Obama appointee, added that the Constitution’s “Article III’s standing requirements are fully met,” adding: “The informational injury asserted is a traditional and long-recognized form of Article III injury.”
The Department of Justice, which is representing the GSA in the case, has not made a public comment on the matter. The Epoch Times has reached out for comment.
“The separation of powers, it must be remembered, is not a one-way street that runs to the aggrandizement of the Executive Branch,” added Miller in the majority ruling. “When the Political Branches duly enact a statute that confers a right, the impairment of which courts have long recognized to be an Article III injury, proper adherence to the limited constitutional role of the federal courts favors judicial respect for and recognition of that injury.”
Judge Douglas Ginsburg was the lone dissenter in the opinion, writing that the minority of lawmakers had sought to use the power of the entire House of Representatives.
“The consequences of allowing a handful of members to enforce in court demands for Executive Branch documents without regard to the wishes of the House majority are sure to be ruinous,” wrote Ginsburg, who was an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan. “Judicial enforcement of requests under [the statute] will allow the minority party (or even an ideological fringe of the minority party) to distract and harass Executive agencies and their most senior officials.”
Ginsburg noted that in prior cases, the D.C. Court of Appeals “has warned it would be hesitant to enforce a document demand made by ‘a wayward committee acting contrary to the will of the House.’”
Sidney Powell retweeted this post: https://twitter.com/sidneypowell1
Gen Flynn Tweet: https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1343998496911798274
Homeless Antifa activists took over sixteen motel rooms near Tacoma, Washington on Christmas Eve and are refusing to pay for the lodging, demanding that local government pick up the tab and turn the motel into a shelter.
According to KOMO News, members of an organization called Tacoma Housing Now paid for 16 rooms for one overnight stay on Dec. 24 at the Travelodge, located at 3518 Pacific Highway E. in Fife, WA. More than 40 homeless people moved in and indicated that they had no plans to pay for additional nights.
The activists are demanding that the city or county pay the motel bill and designate the motel a shelter, as has been done in other parts of the state. Neighboring King County, rented and purchased several locations for shelters and quarantine locations for the homeless at the beginning of coronavirus pandemic.
As suspected, the group responsible for occupying the motel is part of Antifa. Extremist site It's Going Down has published a post by the far-left activists, stating that some of their members are "veterans" of the recent Antifa street battles in Olympia, Wash.
"Housing people in unoccupied hotels doesn’t ruin anyone‘s business," Tacoma House Now tweeted in response.
"If you care about protecting empty spaces more than saving human lives, that says a lot about your ethics and values. We will not accept one more death on the streets!" the Twitter account later declared.
The homeless residents have been pointed to as a source of spiking crime in the surrounding neighborhoods as well as vandalism and even arson at the hotels. The county has providing alcohol and other controlled substances to entice homeless residents not to leave locations being used as quarantine facilities.
Under local ordinances, the activists are trespassing on private property, prompting the motel manager to ask city officials for help to force the activists out of the building. The motel could ask a court for civil relief, potentially setting the stage for police officers to come in and physically evict the group.
Shawn Randhawa, the motel operator, told KOMO News that if the cost of the rooms goes unpaid, it’s only a matter of days before he will have to shut down the motel, which was already devastated by the pandemic, and lay off his employees. Randhawa added that repeated protests in the parking lot have driven away most of the other paying customers.
There are approximately sixty protesters standing outside the motel in addition to the people in the rooms. Two more motel rooms were occupied by activists who joined the original group, bringing the total to eighteen occupied rooms.
“I’m just devastated,” Randhawa told The News Tribune. “Because of the protest, I have nothing else. I was barely getting through this pandemic, and now this. This Christmas, the Grinch came.”
“I’ll have to lock the doors. and if the city won’t kick them out, they can have it,” he told The News Tribune. “I’ll shut off the water and I’m not fighting with these people. I believe there should be a law.”
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Fife City Manager Hyun Kim told KIRO 7, “They may have to close up shop because with no revenues coming in, with their margins where they are, they may have to close operations. So, I’m trying to buy some time. It starts with conversations with both sides.”
Kim added, “This is a societal issue. We have to start the dialogue, but this kind of confrontation, this kind of being splashy about how to get this moving forward is going to lead to more distrust on both sides.”
Randhawa told The News Tribune that he feels the group isn’t giving him a choice and he doesn’t feel supported by the police or the city. He said there was destruction of property when one of the doors was broken to a locked motel room.
“They are keeping me hostage. No one is out to help me,” he said. “It’s complete lawlessness in the city of Fife.”
Earlier this month, activists claiming to be homeless advocates took over an abandoned house that was being redeveloped near Cal Anderson Park in Seattle, as part of an attempt to reconstitute the armed occupation of the neighborhood last summer. Activists issued demands to the city, demanding permanent housing for all and called for a boycott of local businesses who complained to the city about the encampments in the park affecting their operations. The Seattle Police Department eventually raided the house and removed the activists.
Last November, Tacoma Housing Now broke into the abandoned Gault Middle School building in Tacoma and moved homeless people inside. After explaining the air in the building was toxic which is why the building was abandoned and condemned, Tacoma police moved the group out.
Tacoma Housing Now leaders claim that the hotel should be paid, but they want the money to come from COVID-19 relief funds or from defunding local police departments.
Pierce County council member Pam Roach, who represents Fife, told The News Tribune that this situation is a result of the need for housing for the homeless and a disregard for people’s businesses.
“It goes right back to the fact that we need to find space for people especially when it’s cold,” she. “If the government isn’t doing its job, citizens pay for it — just like this business owner.”