DECEMBER 1, 2016.....

 

Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory on Nov. 8 will likely go down as one of the largest political surprises in American history. Although I wrote about its possibility and potential fallout a week before the election, few others saw it coming and many have not yet accepted it as reality. Consequently, efforts to upend November’s results have popped up on a variety of fronts.

Within days of the election, a petition requesting Republican members of the Electoral College cast their votes for Hillary Clinton, rather than Donald Trump, was circulated online.

 

Nearly 5 million people have now signed it. Several members of the Electoral College, calling themselves “Hamilton Electors,” have made it their mission to lobby Republican electors to support an alternative to Trump (e.g., Mitt Romney or John Kasich).

Many Trump supporters wonder why opponents simply cannot accept the outcome of the election, associating efforts to change the result with sore losers, whiners, and jobless troublemakers. They contend that in 2008, opponents of President Obama did not engage in such hijinks by trying to upend the election through unconventional means. Closer inspection proves otherwise.  

In 2008, a concentrated effort to lobby the Electoral College took place out of the public’s eye.

My research on the Electoral College reveals that 8 in 10 electors were lobbied to change their votes in 2008. There would seem to be little to protest when your candidate loses by nearly 100 Electoral College votes and 10 million votes across the country.

Conversely, the popular-electoral vote split this fall has provided fodder for some of the tumult aimed at overturning November’s results by appealing to members of the Electoral College. No such rift existed in 2008 and yet members of that assemblage were targets of a lobbying campaign like the one we are seeing today.   

Electoral College lobbyists in 2008 argued that Barack Obama was literally not qualified to be POTUS because he was not born in the United States. That’s right, the same birtherism that Donald Trump claimed Hillary Clinton started and he finished was the focal point for pleas to alter the outcome of the 2008 election.   

In my survey of the 2000 Electoral College, it was clear that many electors were subjected to an intense lobbying campaign, much like the one that has taken shape this year.

Most were asked to honor the popular vote over the electoral vote. In subsequent surveys, I began directly asking whether electors had been contacted to change their votes and to my surprise, it has happened with surprising frequency.

In 2004, nearly 40 percent of Republican electors were contacted to change their votes and a majority of all electors were lobbied in 2012. In 2008, however, 91 percent of Democratic electors were lobbied to change their votes! Recall that the 2008 election was not particularly close or contested by the losing ticket.

This was puzzling given Obama’s convincing victory, until I read comments from electors themselves.

Electors revealed they were contacted by those questioning the president-elect’s nationality. They were deluged with letters asking them to exercise their judgment and uphold the Constitution. Several electors shared their correspondence with me. One letter with thousands of “signatories” concludes by stating that:

“All Americans should have confidence their president is eligible to serve. In this unique and historic case, you may prove to be the Constitution’s last line of defense.”

Just as today’s Electoral College lobbyists are asking electors to use their discernment, members of the 2008 class were asked to do the same.

A significant audience for potential defections existed in the Electoral College as 8 percent of Democratic electors and nearly 20 percent of Republican electors considered voting faithlessly in 2008. This stealthy campaign has gone largely unnoticed and is worth revisiting given the current campaign to alter November’s outcome.  

In writings elsewhere, I presaged the likelihood of this year’s Electoral College lobbying campaign prior to its commencement. What is surprising is not that such a campaign has emerged in a closely contested election, but that they have also occurred in undisputed elections and outside the public’s eye.

No electors in 2008 were moved by the birther campaign to go rogue and it is unlikely the Hamilton electors will entice Republican electors to stop Trump in the Electoral College. So while Republicans did not take to the streets en masse in 2008, thousands did appeal to electors in hopes of undoing the results of the election.

To suggest Republicans willingly accepted the results of the election in 2008 is to deny the concerted effort to block Obama in the Electoral College behind the scenes.  

 

Robert Alexander is Professor of Political Science at Ohio Northern University and author of “Presidential Electors and the Electoral College: An Examination of Lobbying, Wavering Electors, and Campaigns for Faithless Votes.”

 

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/308379-remember-when-republicans-tried-to-stop-obama-with/

 

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MEANWHILE, HILLARY CLINTON SHOULD BE IN PRISON FOR HAVING INVENTED RUSSIAGATE.... AND BARAK OBAMA TOO FOR HAVING INSPIRED THE LOT BY ALLOWING THE FBI TO SPY ON TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW FOR REAL JUSTICE........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOtQSfZeX_A

‘The Five’: Will Obama help Biden keep his job?

 

The cartoon in the SMH today (06/08/2023) is funny because it does not tell the truth:

 

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN:

 

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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW FOR REAL JUSTICE........

 

BY Jonathan Turley

 

Below is my column in USA Today on the second indictment of former President Donald Trump. While many are celebrating the charges, the implications for free speech are chilling. While Smith did not charge incitement or insurrection (or seditious conspiracy), commentators (and Smith) portrayed the case as holding Trump accountable for the actual riot in the Capitol. Notably, the same pundits and politicians previously insisted that the rejected crimes were obvious and well-established. Indeed, Trump was impeached on incitement charges. They are now shrugging off the conspicuous omission of those charges while attacking those of us with free speech concerns as apologists.

 

Here is the column:

Special counsel Jack Smith made history on Tuesday.

It wasn’t just the federal indictment of a former president. Smith already did that in June with the indictment of Donald Trump on charges that he mishandled classified documents.

No, Smith and his team have made history in the worst way by attempting to fully criminalize disinformation by seeking the incarceration of a politician on false claims made during and after an election.

The hatred for Trump is so all-encompassing that legal experts on the political left have ignored the chilling implications of this indictment. This complaint is based largely on statements that are protected under the First Amendment. It would eviscerate free speech and could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections.

In the 2012 United States v. Alvarez decision, the Supreme Court held 6-3 that it is unconstitutional to criminalize lies in a case involving a politician who lied about military decorations.

The court warned such criminalization “would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court’s cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a foundation of our freedom.”

That precedent did not deter Smith. This indictment is reminiscent of the case against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. His conviction on 11 corruption-related counts was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that federal prosecutors relied on a “boundless” definition of actions that could trigger criminal charges against political leaders.

Smith is now showing the same abandon in pursuing Trump, including detailing his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, before the riot while omitting the line where Trump told his supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol to “peacefully” protest the certification.

While the indictment acknowledges that candidates are allowed to make false statements, Smith proceeded to charge Trump for making “knowingly false statements.”

On the election claims, Smith declares that Trump “knew that they were false” because he was “notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue.”

The problem is that Trump had lawyers and others telling him that the claims were true. Smith is indicting Trump for believing his lawyers over his other advisers.

I criticized Trump’s Jan. 6 speech while he was still giving it and wrote that his theory on the election and the certification challenge was unfounded. However, that does not make it a crime.

If you take a red pen to protected free speech in this indictment, it would be reduced to a virtual haiku. Moreover, if you concede that Trump may have believed that the election was stolen, the complaint collapses.

Smith also noted that Trump made false claims against the accuracy of voting machines in challenging the outcome of the election. In 2021, Democratic lawyers alleged that thousands of votes may have been switched or changed by voting machines in New York elections. Was that also a crime of disinformation?

Smith indicted Trump because the now former president “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.” The special counsel also says Trump “repeated and widely disseminated (the lies) anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

Let’s acknowledge that Trump was wrong. The election wasn’t stolen. He lost, and Joe Biden won.

But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims? And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years? When, in politics, does making a false statement cross the line into criminal behavior? Those are questions Smith and his team must answer in court, and ones that Trump’s defense team is likely to raise.

Polls previously showed that roughly half of the public viewed earlier charges against Trump as politically motivated. That is why many of us hoped that any indictment would be based on unquestioned legal authority and unassailable evidence.

Smith offered neither. This indictment will deepen the view of many in the public that the Justice Department is thoroughly compromised in pursuing political prosecutions.

These concerns were magnified Tuesday by Smith, who announced the charges with comments that made him sound more like a pundit than a prosecutor. The special counsel gave an impassioned account of the Capitol riot that made it sound like Trump was charged with incitement. He wasn’t. Nor was he charged with seditious conspiracy, despite his second impeachment on those charges.

Notably, many of the legal experts praising the indictment previously insisted that there was a clear case for incitement against Trump. Indeed, Democratic members made the claim the center of the second impeachment, despite some of us writing that there was no actionable claim.

Even Smith wouldn’t touch the incitement or sedition claims that were endlessly pushed by legal experts and Democratic members.

Instead, Smith will seek to criminalize false political claims. To bag Trump, he will have to bulldoze through the First Amendment and a line of Supreme Court cases. That’s why this latest indictment of Trump isn’t just wrong. It is reckless.

Jonathan Turley, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/08/04/making-history-in-the-wrong-way-the-second-trump-indictment-is-a-threat-to-free-speech/ 

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AhlmkyqVRs

 

WHEN OUR OWN PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC IDEALISTS LIE TO FIGHT THE "LIES" OF OUR HATED CONSERVATIVES, THE WORLD END UP UPSIDE DOWN...

AND DEMOCRACY NEEDS A BIT OF A SHAKE UP.

FOR EXAMPLE, IN CONTRAST TO PAKISTAN WHERE THE POPULAR (POSSIBLY SOCIALIST) IMRAN KHAN HAS BEEN DEPOSED AND PLACED IN PRISON BY A MILITARY COUP FOMENTED BY AMERICA, THE MILITARY COUP IN NIGER SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN NECESSARY TO RESET A PATH TO DEMOCRACY BY REMOVING THE CORRUPT WESTERN PUPPET THAT HAS KEPT NIGER AS AN INDEBTED COLONY OF THE WEST — OR AS GEORGE GALLOWAY CALLS IT THE FRENCH POODLE. 

SO THE NEW NIGER "DESPOTIC" LEADER — WHO HAS SEEN THAT HIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN PLUNDERED BY THE NE0-COLONIALISTS SINCE THE "INDEPENDENCE" OF NIGER, HAS CALLED UPON THE WAGNER GROUP FOR A BIT OF HELP AGAINST A POSSIBLE INVASION FROM THE OTHER NEO-COLONIAL "INDEPENDENT" AFRICAN COUNTRIES OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE. AS WELL, ALGERIA HAS PROMISED TO FIGHT ON BEHALF OF THE NEW "DESPOT" IN NIGER (ALGERIAN TANKS ARE ALREADY ON THE BORDER WITH NIGER), IN ORDER TO LET NIGER REGAIN (OR GAIN) CONTROL OF ITS OWN RICHNESS. 

THIS IS WHY MALI IS NOW ALSO UNDER A DICTATORSHIP. — THE YOUNGEST NEW LEADER IN THE WORLD CLAIMING THAT WITH ALL THE RICHNESS OF AFRICA, AFRICA IS STILL THE POOREST CONTINENT ON THE PLANET.... WHY? WE KNOW THAT THE "WELL INTENDED FREEDOM LOVING" WEST IS PLUNDERING THE PLACE — EVEN WORSE THAN DURING COLONIAL TIMES!

SAY THAT MALI HAS MORE THAN 300 GOLD MINES AND MALI HAD NO GOLD, JUST POVERTY...

SAY THAT NIGER HAS URANIUM TO POWER THE ELECTRICITY GRID IN FRANCE AND THAT 80 PER CENT OR SO NIGEREANS HAVE NO ELECTRICITY.

THROWING OUT THE "CONTROLLED WESTERN DEMOCRACY" OF MALI, NIGER AND BUKINA FASO WAS NECESSARY TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE... WHICH IS THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENTS — DEMOCRATIC OR NOT.

SAY THAT IMRAN KHAN WAS TRYING TO MAKE PAKISTAN AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY FROM THE AMERICAN HEGEMONY AND CREATE WEALTH FOR THE PAKISTANIS, BUT HELL NO... THERE, THE REVERSE HAPPENED. THE NEW DICTATORS IN PAKISTAN ARE SELLING THE PUBLIC ASSETS TO MULTINATIONALS, THAT ALSO INCLUDE CHINESE AND INDIAN INTERESTS, UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE....

IN THIS UPSIDE DOWN WORLD, WE ALSO NEED TO VISIT THE HYPOCRISY BESET ON KOSOVO AND SERBIA BY MI6...

 

FROM THE GRAYZONE:

No one in British parliament has been more aggressive in inciting ethnic tensions in Kosovo than Alicia Kearns. A closer look at her record reveals intelligence ties and “probably illegal” regime change activities.

In a remarkable turnaround, after over two decades of turning a blind eye to the slow-motion erasure of Serbs in Kosovo, the EU and US have finally sought to rein in their vassal, issuing frequent condemnations and even imposing sanctions on Pristina.

While trivial compared to punitive measures applied to states where the West seeks regime change, the sanctions on Kosovo would have been inconceivable at the start of 2023. Both Brussels and Washington have made clear to Prime Minister Albin Kurti that the penalties will be reversed, if he eases tensions with the aspiring country’s Serb population and reintegrates them into the political fold.

Kurti remains defiant, however. One explanation for his intransigence could be the quiet encouragement from British intelligence. Inside the British parliament, no lawmaker has been more outspoken in their condemnation of the sanctions on Kosovo than Alicia Kearns, the head of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, and a close ally of various Kosovar officials.

The Grayzone can reveal Kearns is a veteran psychological warfare specialist and British intelligence operative. Her willfully concealed professional résumé contains strong suggestions of a background as an MI6 officer who has deployed dark arts in myriad theaters of Western conflict. 

Could her recent public interventions on the Kosovo crisis be the spark that finally ignites the Ukraine proxy war’s second front in the former Yugoslavia?

 

British ‘peacekeepers’ lay foundations for war

This July 4th, Kearns delivered an extraordinarily belligerent speech in parliament. she painted a portrait of modern day Serbia as the center of a vast web of election meddling, organized crime, disinformation, terrorism, and destabilization spanning the Balkans and beyond. She concluded her remarks by demanding London take decisive action.

“The government…must recognise that the power to deter sits in this House and [the Foreign Office]. We can do this,” Kearns fulminated, before proposing London post peacekeeping troops throughout the region, to counter Serbia’s purported threats. She added:

“The UK has an independent voice within the quint and the international arena to say no to the EU and the US. We can say to them…you will not continue to take the approach that you currently are, because all you are doing is enabling the autocrats and, frankly, hitting our democratic allies with a stick.”

Central to her diatribe was the contention Serbian government-controlled terror cells were working to destabilize Kosovo, assisted by a steady flow of weapons and funding from Belgrade. Kearns claimed the British government and NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) peacekeeping mission were “well aware” of the illicit Serbian activity, but had so far failed to take action.

“For too long we have failed to call out armed Serb militias operating in the North of Kosovo…” she declared. “There are weapons being smuggled across the border from Serbia into Orthodox churches in ambulances. When our troops become aware of that, and try to get permission to go and get them, the permissions take too long. By the time there is permission…an ambulance has turned up at the church and taken all the weapons out again.”

The allegation, which had never before been publicly leveled by any Western official, triggered widespread outcry in Serbia. It also prompted a rare public disavowal by KFOR. Just 24 hours after Kearns made her explosive claims in parliament, the mission firmly declared there was no evidence whatsoever that weapons were being smuggled into Kosovo from Serbia. 

A spokesperson explained the incident to which she referred occurred in 2022, when British troops stationed in North Kosovo reported an “illegal weapon presence” to KFOR HQ: “After further investigation in order to find confirmation of that, no evidence has emerged of what was reported.”

Kearns’ crusade for British intervention against Serbia is unlikely to be impeded by disclosures like these. On the same day KFOR detonated her narrative, she was named by Politico as one of the top 40 MPs “most effective at securing policy change and setting the agenda in Westminster.” 

As we will see, Kearns has wielded sinister and significant influence in other theaters of covert warfare, and through operations that have yet to be publicized.

 

Alicia Kearns’ record of Syria spook work ‘probably illegal’

Throughout the decade-long Syrian crisis, British intelligence ran a variety of elaborate, covert information warfare campaigns at a cost of millions annually. The objective was to destabilize the government of Bashar Assad, convince Syrians, international bodies and Western publics that genocidal CIA and MI6-backed militant groups pillaging the country were a “moderate” alternative, and to deluge media the world over with pro-opposition propaganda.

These efforts were delivered by a constellation of shadowy contractors. Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone show that between 2014 and 2016, their work was overseen and directed by Kearns under the auspices of Whitehall’s Counter Daesh Communications Cell.

 

READ MORE:

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/07/27/british-intelligence-war-kosovo/

 

 

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THE DARK FORCES OF THE EMPIRE ARE AT WORK. REBELLION IS NECESSARY....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 

All of a sudden Trump's a FLIGHT RISK? Are you kidding me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUzhqs6Vu3g

 

All of a sudden Trump's a FLIGHT RISK? Jack Smith stoops to that level

 

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