In the Spirit of Jefferson Davis (part fourteen)

 

Part fourteen.

 

Every movement has leaders, and NPR has dubbed the top Big Lie leaders, or at least those who don’t hold public office, as “Influencers” They represent a gigantic, Nation-wide, grass-roots movement backed by big-money donors and bigger-still power connections. The leading Influencer is, of course, Mike Lindell, many times a millionaire because of the success of his company, My Pillow, meets with Trump with some frequency and claims to have donated $40 million dollars to restoring Trump to the White House.

 

To get some sense of how much influence the Influencers actually had, NPR followed four of them for a year-and-a-half through their public Social Media accounts, Websites and the Social Media accounts of local Stop the Steal organizations; those four are Lindell, Douglas Frank, Seth Keshel, and David Clements. As of the beginning of summer, 2022, these four have attended or hosted 308 events in 45 states and the District of Columbia, often appearing together. They’ve met or appeared with at least 78 Elected Officials at the Federal, State and Local levels, many of whom would have a role in how future elections are executed and certified, this included more than three dozen State Legislators (many of these Elected Official introduced voter suppression legislation), two State-level Secretaries of State, two State Attorney Generals, two Lieutenant Governors, two Federal Senators, 10 Federal Representatives. They have also met, or appeared with, well over a hundred Candidates running in 2022 races. In addition to their speaking and lobbying, they promote merchandise like T-shirts, books and body lotions.

 

Former DHS Official Krebs (fired by Trump the prior November for not supporting the Big Lie), stated, “It's this constellation of election conspiracy theorists. You can see the complexion of local politics shifting as a result. They have decentralized post-January 6th and are really trying to effect change at the lowest-possible level."

 

Michigan Secretary of State Benson (targeted by a Terroristic mob at her own home a Democrat the prior December), insists that the Influencers are using Election Fraud myths to advance themselves personally. "There's no shortage of ability to access the truth about our election system, yet there seems to be a proliferation of people willing to lie about it. I think it's logical to conclude that they know better. And that they're knowingly spreading misinformation ... to win elections, to raise money, to gain attention and celebrity."

 

A massive anti-Election Fraud campaign in the context of no evidence of significant fraud, is really a campaign to undermine faith in elections in general, and therefore Democracy itself. Even when the players are not members of the QAnon community, it’s QAnon logic, similarities can be seen in the way Election Fraud and Child-Sex Trafficking are used for partisan hackery, personal gain and/or self-aggrandizement: both are both real, and really serious, crimes, but here treated only as strategies, not realities, as spring-boards for accusations and actions without evidence or due process, all to advocate for fundamental systematic changes based on charges that are, themselves, based on fantasy. These are the corrosive and dangerous tactics of a Witch Hunter, and it’s notable that here, the Witch Hunters are constantly complaining they, not their victims, are the target of the Witch Hunt.

 

Elections Expert at the University of Southern California, Franita Tolson, stated, "It's an existential threat to American democracy, If the numbers get big enough, it's unclear whether we will survive it."

 

Until March, Frank was a minor player in all this, then he was elevated by the already famous Lindell. "I went from being completely mum to suddenly 10 million people knowing me in about a week.” Frank’s one of those guys who claims to have developed an algorithm, a ground-breaking insight that all others had missed, proving the Biden win was bogus. His qualifications were that he’s a former High School Math Teacher. Not surprisingly, his methodology has been widely debunked by voting experts.

 

Keshel isa retired Army Captain with a background in Intelligence who served in Afghanistan and is known as "Captain K" in Big Lie circles.

 

Clements is an Attorney who previously served as Deputy District Attorney in New Mexico’s 12^th Judicial District, and Professor at the New Mexico State University Business School. Regarding his work as an Attorney, he’s currently answering to complaints against him at the Disciplinary Board of the New Mexico Supreme Court, the details of which have not been made public. Regarding his teaching, he's been suspended, with pay, for violating the Universities CV19 policies (he told his class, "As you can see, I am not wearing a mask. Why is that? Because I haven't lost my mind, that's why. I will not wear a mask.") and has been blocked from flights on certain airlines. He’s also under fire for an on-line fund-raiser, set up on his behalf by fellow Conspiracy Masturbater Joe Oltmann, which brought in more-than $278,000 in donations as Summer 2022. Initially, the fundraiser headline stated that Clements was "fired for standing up," even though he was still drawing a salary, Clements’ explanation for this was that his firing was "a forgone conclusion." 

 

 

March 1^st, Trump appeared on FOX networks The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton bragged about huge the 1/6 rally at the White House was, "That rally was massive ... the press doesn't like to talk about it, but the real number was much, much bigger in terms of the people that were at the location. It went all the way back, practically, to the Washington Monument. It was tremendous numbers of people — not the Capitol. I'm talking about the rally itself. And it was a love fest ... It was a beautiful thing."

 

As that rally was the starting point of the violent Coup attempt, so I’m unimpressed with the “not the Capitol” cavate. I see this as pretty unconditional support to the 1/6 Terrorists and Traitors.

 

He also he "wasn't watching TV" during the Insurrection and, "later on when I heard about it, and did a lot of moves."

 

Moving to Arizona, Maricopa County is important to our story, because it’s the most populous County in Arizona and essential for securing Biden’s narrow victory in that state. The Chairman of the Board of Supervisors is Clint Hickman.

 

March 6^th, Hickman was driving towards his family’s egg farm outside Phoenix. From miles away, he could see the pillar of smoke rising from the property. It would prove to be the most devastating fire in the farm’s almost eighty-year history, ultimately killing more-than 650,000 hens.

 

No, it wasn’t arson, but the Conspiracy Masturbation that had inspired so much Terrorism and Terrorist threats, over the last serval months would soon take center-stage in this mundane business disaster.

 

All afternoon, as firefighters fought the blaze and Hickman worked on accounting for all his employees, he was receiving phone calls and texts from friends and colleagues; they were offering the expected statements of concern and support, but some were also giving him a heads-up regarding a story about the fire that was published in the Gateway Pundit while the fire still burned. The headline read, “After Finding Shredded Ballots in the Dumpster Earlier Today — A Mysterious Fire Breaks Out at Maricopa County Official’s Farm.”

 

No shredded ballots found, that part was completely invented, and the rest of the prose was chock-full of inuendo. “There better be a good investigation into these fires,” the story concluded, questioning whether imaginary shredded ballots could’ve burned in the chicken coops.

 

The story grew, and mutated, and soon it alternated between Hickman setting the fire to destroy evidence, or Hickman was about to turn Whistle Blower and the fire was a warning sent to him by the nefarious cabal of Satan-worshipping Cannibalistic Child-Sex-Traffickers that all Biden supporters in Official positions were in league with.

 

I should throw in here, Hickman’s a long-time Republican.

 

The stories on Social Media inspired threats and harassment towards Hickman and his staff. One particularly colorful email stated,

 

“I am not surprised that you and your fellow board members are continuing to thwart a transparent audit. Shredded ballots and now a fire? Good grief!! Now you are killing animals as well? We all know what you are up to and we are working to recall each one of you . I hope you are held fully accountable for committing treason against the country and betraying your fellow Americans. Shame on you!”

 

But, of course, it didn’t really start on this date, it started on election night, now four months ago. The passions were on Election Day 2021, if not earlier. On the evening of 1/6 Insurrection, he arrived home to find police guarding his house; there hadn’t been a specific threat, but given what was happening in D.C, the Police thought it prudent.

 

And more than a year later after the fire, it still hasn’t ended. Hickman stated that Election Workers were quitting because they “don’t want to take the abuse, and they want to stand down … That’s the problem I’m seeing with public service, we are losing competent election workers across the United States because they just can’t take the threats.”

 

Related to this, Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona, Keith Allred, warned, “Most people aren’t going to want to deal with death threats when they’re just doing their job. When it turns to not only being ugly speech, but threats of violence and actual violence, what reasonable person isn’t going to consider that? It’s going to make it harder for good people to think about public service.”

 

Also on this day, in Georgia, HB 531, a voter suppression law, passes. I’ll go into more detail when I get to Senate Bill 202, which is essentially the same law. It was sponsored by Representative Barry Fleming

 

March 10^th, the Board of Commissioners in Hancock County, Georgia, which has had notable battles concerning Voter Suppression as recently as 2015 (when a Federal Judge over-turned a Republican-led voter purge) voted 4-0 to demand Representative Fleming’s resignation because of his sponsorship of House Bill 531. Fleming represents a different District than Hancock, which critics call a "voter suppression bill." His District has a White majority, Handcock is at least 71% Black. This is emblematic of the battle is Georgia and other States, at it’s core, its about Party Power, who has the bult-in advantages, Republican or Democrat, but on the street-level, it generally comes down to White vs Black or Brown, and if not that, affluent vs poor.

 

March 12^th, in Wisconsin, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Gableman, Special Counsel Michael Gableman, and Attorney Erick Kaardal produced and interim report on their Election Fraud investigation that had been requested by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. At this juncture, the contract had cost the tax-payer $676,000. It was done through the auspices of the Thomas More society, an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, nonprofit that had seen its funding increase dramatically when it recently shifted its focus to Stop the Steal.

 

The report concluding that there was evidence enough to overturn the Election (now Certified by Congress three months past). Overthrowing the election, alone, could not remove Biden from office, he would still have more than 270 Electoral votes of Arizona was reversed, and even if he dipped below that number, the legal battle would be unimaginable. Still, Decertifying Arizona would set off a National-wide chain reaction, sorely impacting Biden’s capacities as POTUS and throwing the all State-level results into utter chaos. The report focused what they called “Election Bribery” and “Voter Abuse.”

 

Election Bribery was the primary claim, attacking a separate nonprofit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which provided grant money for training Election workers, adding secure ballot drop boxes, conducting voter education campaigns, and many other tasks in 200 separate Municipalities. Thomas More was upset over five of these Municipalities: Green Bay, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Madison and Racine, all Democratic strong-holds that Thomas More obnoxiously referred to as the “Zuckerberg Five;” they had collectively received $8.8 million from CTCL. Kaardal stated. “We can’t have third parties using private money to influence cities to do an illegal … election administration … And so that’s why we’re gonna win.”

 

Professor at Marquette University Law School, Atiba Ellis, who specializes in election law, was dismissive, “Short of voters getting paid directly out of these grants, it seems difficult for me to make a connection between what the folks who are getting these grants are doing and credible claims or bribery. Labeling the grants as Election Bribery was “a dangerous road to go down” because Local Governments all across the USA rely on grant money to carry out Elections and other basic functions. It’s a “disservice to the law to suggest fraudulent behavior on the most tenuous evidence.”

 

State Representative Mark Spreitzer, who sits on the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, responded to the report by asking the Legislative Council for any case law supporting the Bribery claim. There was none.

 

Moreover, the same argument had been made in Court in other parts of the country before, and failed.

 

Voter Abuse was a Nursing Home non-scandal. Gableman argued that there was suspiciously high voter turn-out among residents of Nursing Homes (note: this “suspiciously high” turn-out was in the context of an Election with historically high turn-out over-all). He argued that residents who lacked mental capacity to vote had cast absentee votes and that was his definition of “Abuse.”

Gableman and the Thomas More team was able to find a grand total of four cases that, maybe, represented person who found legally incompetent to vote casting ballots, and that does raises questions about the validity of those four votes. But in most cases Gableman relied on Kaardal’s personal assessment to question a voter’s competence, not a Judge’s order. In the real world, had anyone but the first four (and perhaps not even that four) been stripped of the right to vote, that would been a crime, that really would’ve constituted abuse.

 

The Thomas More team presented videos to the State  Assembly the previous month showing Kaardal interviewing nursing home residents along with their guardians (the guardians were also Kaardal’s clients). Kaardal asked about the resident’s preferred choice of hypothetical candidates, one who wanted to raise taxes and another who didn’t, as well as questions about what happens on Election Day and how a winner is picked. The questions were sometimes long-winded, and the residents were often befuddled.

 

Spreitzer criticized the investigation and even the statistical evidence, “It’s cherry-picked (data) at best, and simply wrong at worst.”

 

The Bribery argument was later thrown out of Court. The statistics allegedly supporting the Abuse claim were debunked.

 

 

March 14^th, Senator Ron Johnson, already implicated in the Fake Elector scheme, continued to dig his own grave by praising the 1/6 Terrorists during a “The Joe Pags Show” radio interview. described the 1/6 Terrorists this way, “those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law.

 

“Now, had the tables been turned — now, Joe, this will get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”

 

BLM is a huge bugbear to the whole of the RWN universe. They were the main organizers behind Nation-wide protests demanding police reform during the summer of 2020. The interpterion of those protests fall along strict ideological lines, Liberals point out that 93% of the hundreds upon hundreds of events were non-violent, while Conservatives point out that the remaining 7% resulted in twenty-or-more homicides and property damage costs inflicted during protests greater than any similar outbursts since at least 1968. Both in terms loss of life and treasure, the BLM costs were far higher than during the Stop the Steal/pro-Trump events that unfolded between November 3^rd and January 6^th, but BLM has always been explicit, nonviolence is their most powerful political tactic. Moreover, during the summer protests, the violence was reciprocal, and though Leftist committed much of it, the most headline-grabbing violence came from agitators on the Right -- the only Police Officer murdered (though not the only one fired-upon), the only mass shooting, and the only arson of a Police Station (though not the only arson).

 

 

March 25^th, Georgia’s now two-month-old campaign against Democracy comes to fruition with the passing of SB 202, also known as the ‘Election Integrity Act of 2021,” effectively the final version of the previously mentioned HB 531. It granted the Legislator, then under Republican control, powerful, structural, advantages future elections that far out-weighed the Republican Party’s actually support in the State, presumably assuring the Assembly would remain Republican forever. It sparked national outrage.

 

Political Scientist at the University of Georgia said, Cas Mudde, stated, “This is anti-democratic … It literally tries to undermine the one-person, one-vote principle that is at the core of democracy.”

 

Election Law Expert at UC Irvine, Rick Hasen, stated, “One of the worst aspects of the bill is the part making election administration even more partisan. That’s a move in exactly the wrong direction.”

 

In Georgia, before this Law, key issues of Election management, including disqualifying ballots and voter eligibility, were made on the County level. SB 202 empowered the State Board of Elections to replace an entire County Board unilaterally, this covertly moved much of the authority to State level.

 

The State’s ability to unilaterally replace the local Board was especially concerning in Fulton County, where the State’s largest city, Atlanta, could be found. It had a Democratic majority, a Black majority, was key to Trump’s loss in the State, so became the main the target of Big Lie advocates.

 

This could effect Atlanta’s District Attorney Willis, pursuing among the most important of the State-level criminal investigations regarding pro-Trump election fraud in the whole of the USA, and targeting top Officials within the State Republican Party. She’s an Elected Official, and her Elections are managed inside Fulton County. The moment the law went into effect, the State Board launched a Performance Review of the Fulton County Board.

 

It also restructured that State Board. The previous four-member board is now five, the reason for this is that Secretary of State, directly Elected by the Citizens, was reduced to an ex-officio member without a vote. The new Chair will be appointed by vote with the General Assembly, which the Republican Party Currently held a majority. Two more were appointed by the two major Parties in the Assembly, so one Republican and one Democrat. others already were. The fifth was already, and would continue to be, appointed by the Governor, Republican Kemp. The Board already had a four-to-one voting majority because both the Governor and Secretary of State were Republican, but that was in no way guaranteed, with these changes granted two votes automatically to whichever party controlled the General Assembly, as the Governor was generally of that same Party, this was a near-automatic ruling majority, dictated by the Assembly. Also, it removed any power once secured through direct Elections.

 

The Secretary of State, of course, is Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who (along with Governor Kemp) famously stood up to Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results. This was clearly punishment for his courage.

 

Representative David Worley, the sole Democrat on the Board at the time the Law passed, stated, “It will give the State Election Board the authority to replace a limited number, it appears, of county election superintendents, and that can be a very partisan tool in the wrong hands.”

 

Representative Josh McLaurin stated, “I think the provision for state takeover of local election processes is a natural choice for a party whose election policy is driven by Trump’s ‘big lie.’ By centralizing control over those processes, Republicans make their own manipulation easier while also removing a principal barrier to their lies.”

 

County Board of Elections member Helen Butler stated, “It’s looking at total control of the election process by elected officials, which is not what it should be. It’s all about turnout and trying to retain power.”

 

During the debate on the House version of the same Bill, Sponsoring Representative Barry Fleming didn’t disguise the Laws’ sinister purpose, “We, as legislators, decide how we will actually be elected, because we decide our own boards of elections and those of the counties we are elected from.”

 

Another provision read, “the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector...within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place.” That would include providing a cup of water or offering an umbrella. In 2020, many voters had to wait for hours in line to vote, especially majority Black areas. The wait times had been steadily increasing for years, in part because of increasing turn outs and part because the already Republican-Majority Board had already cut the number of polling places by 10%.

 

Also, any Georgian Citizen was permitted to file an unlimited number of challenges to the eligibility of any other voter, a provision that encourages harassment and will make any voter’s rights more vulnerable in the midst of that harassment.

 

It imposed new limitations on ballot drop boxes, effectively ban their widespread deployment outside of a Governor-declared emergency.

 

New rules apply the States voter ID laws to mail-in ballots. They also restrictively shifted back the deadline dates.

 

It limited the hours for early voting, and even more controversially, restricted early voting on Sundays when Black Churches traditionally ran "Souls to the Polls" get-out-the-events.

 

It created a vote-fraud hotline for anonymous complaints regarding allegedly fraudulent behavior at the polls, this despite there were already Election Officials, armed Police, and often volunteer Poll Watchers at every polling site.

 

When you put all of that together, it’s fairly clear what this bill is designed to do: create barriers to voting that most likely would affect voters who didn’t have the time and resources to navigate them. In Georgia, as in most places, that’s low-income and minority voters,  two disproportionately Democratic demographics.

 

Minority Leader in the Georgia State House and once-and-future Candidate for Governor, Stacy Abrams, who is often credited for Georgia’s Democratic swing in 2020, stated, “It’s Jim Crow in a suit and tie … Cutting off access, adding restrictions, encouraging more ‘show me your papers’ actions to challenge a citizen’s right to vote [is] facially neutral but racially targeted.”

 

In a separate interview, she stated, “Republicans are brazenly trying to seize local and state election authority in an unprecedented power grab … intended to alter election outcomes and remove state and county election officials who refuse to put party above the people … Had their grand plan been law in 2020, the numerous attempts by state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters would have succeeded.”

 

Representative Powell defended the bill, saying "Show me the suppression. There is no suppression in this bill."

Governor Kemp, who had stood up to Trump in November, signed the Bill the same day, to benefit State level Republicans and impact the 2022 Federal mid-term Elections.

 

The purge of the Local Boards began begun even by the Bill passed; though the Bill shifted the authority from Local to State Government, it was not as if the Local Governments were able to resist partisan temptations. Since November, at nine Republican Counties passed Local Legislation dissolving their current election boards, serval of which had previously been composed of composed of three Republicans and two Democrats, and replaced them with a appointees chosen by the County Commissioner alone, creating single-party boards. The County Commissioners are Elected Offices, and their re-Elections are affected by the composition of these Boards.

 

 

March 28^th, featured bold words from Federal Judge David Carter in a Civil Case that had Criminal implications. It concerned the gathering of evidence for the up-coming 1/6 Committee Hearings in the Federal House of Representatives. Central to this case was the Fake Electors scheme, and the role-played Professor Eastman (by then former-Professor) and his interactions with Trump. Eastman was desperate to keep his emails out of the hands of investigators, and in a wholly futile effort, he sued to stop the subpoena to hand them over. Carter rejected this, and then made a few potentially historic statements, He call Trump’s post-election efforts “a coup in search of a legal theory,” and that “more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress … The illegality of the plan was obvious.” In other words, in open Court, a sitting Judge called Trump a Criminal. Regarding this plot, a host of Fraud charges are obvious, and some legal experts have argued it could escalate to Seditious Conspiracy.

 

Ronald “Ronnie” Sandlin is suspected of plotting with two other men to bring weapons to the Capitol, posed for a video smoking weed inside the Capitol, and also videoed punching an Officer, both events taking place during the 1/6 attempted Coup. He had repeatedly assured the judge that he regretted his actions. He was desperate to make bail, blubbered, “Your honor, have mercy on me. Please.” Another crime he committed was having a contraband cell-phone in the jail. He probably regrets that crime the most, because the FBI got ahold of his tests.

 

March 30^th, Sandlin texted his mother, “I’m in a cell block with all Capitol people. I’m proud to call them my friends we stood up for what we believed in and sacrificed .. It may sound self serving but I truly believe I have a divine destiny to fulfill and I/we made history that day and the full implications of our actions [have] yet to be realized.”

Anyway, when this was presented in Court, he was denied bail.