February 17, 2023

Dominon Just Gave Jack Smith Useful Evidence

As you read through Dominion’s motion for summary judgement against Fox News — and trust me, you should read it! — keep in mind not just how it proves Fox to be nothing but a propaganda platform aiming to help the Republican Party, but also the evidence it makes available to Jack Smith as he considers charges against those who used false claims about voting fraud to gin up a coup attempt.

Just as one example, Sean Hannity has played a role in every Trump legal scandal — serving as a back channel to Trump for Paul Manafort, participating in Rudy Giuliani’s attempts to gin up dirt on Hunter Biden as the first impeachment unfolded, and helping White House officials stave off the resignations of Trump’s White House Counsels in advance of January 6. But in each case, investigators only got his communications via other subjects of the investigation, as when DOJ found Manafort’s WhatsApp texts to Hannity saved in Manafort’s iCloud account or when the January 6 Committee got Signal texts Hannity exchanged with Mark Meadows from the former Chief of Staff’s production. Republicans chose not to call Hannity as a pro-Trump witness in the Ukraine impeachment.

With its filing, Dominion has given a snapshot of the ways and whys in which Fox News helped magnify false voter fraud claims, especially (though not exclusively) those of Sidney Powell.

It all takes place against the backdrop of a huge backlash against Fox after it called AZ for Joe Biden. When Fox presented the truth about the election, viewers started fleeing to Newsmax, with Trump’s encouragement. The filing describes the panic that ensued.
===============================

More at https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/02/17/dominion-just-gave-jack-smith-useful-evidence/

Link to Dominion's motion https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23684885-230216-dominion-fox

February 10, 2023

CNN suspects Michael Flynn's family deleted communications, demands 'forensic search' of phones

Suspecting that Michael Flynn’s family members deleted documents and communications, CNN asked a federal judge to order a forensic examination of their cellphones.

It’s the latest wrinkle over the fallout of a video that former national security advisor Michael Flynn posted of himself and his family members at a July 4th barbecue on 2020.

In the footage, the Flynns raised their right hands in the style of a pledge of allegiance, reciting the words “Where we go one, we go all.” Flynn posted the video to his Twitter account with the hashtag #TakeTheOath. CNN flagged the video in a segment days later, characterizing it as a QAnon oath. The broadcasts sparked multiple federal lawsuits by Flynn family members, claiming the resemblance of the slogan and hashtag to the extremist conspiracy theories are incidental.

The lawsuit currently snaking through the Southern District of New York, filed by Flynn’s brother John “Jack” Flynn and that sibling’s wife Leslie Flynn, insisted that what CNN branded an oath was a “simple, family, July 4 statement of support for each other.”
==================

More at:
https://lawandcrime.com/qanon/cnn-suspects-michael-flynns-family-deleted-communications-demands-forensic-search-of-phones/

February 9, 2023

FiveThirtyEight Republican Primary Presidential Poll Aggregates

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/

Very early, I know-but 45 way ahead of Desatan. I personally would like to see Joe stomp 45 one more time

February 9, 2023

James O'Keefe 'Outright Cruel' to Project Veritas Employees, Internal Memo Alleges

https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-okeefe-outright-cruel-to-project-veritas-employees-internal-memo


The undercover video operation run by right-wing operative James O’Keefe is in turmoil, wracked by unhappy donors and O’Keefe’s “outright cruel” behavior towards his staff, according to an internal memo signed by a third of its employees.

Working for O’Keefe at Project Veritas can mean being “publicly humiliated” by him in what amounts to “public crucifixions,” and even being required to take lie detector tests, his unhappy employees write in the memo.

“I would describe Project Veritas’ current environment with this saying: ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves,’” one disgruntled staffer wrote in the memo.

On Monday, Project Veritas staffers presented the nonprofit’s board with the document covering his behavior, saying they were “troubled and frustrated” by O’Keefe’s management style. Later that day, the board voted to reinstate two executives O’Keefe had fired a week earlier, while O’Keefe went on paid leave.
==========================================


Spitting on employees and stealing food from a pregnant woman...ugh.

February 8, 2023

I got a heart-Thank you!

Loads of thanks to that person and all of you-I love being in this great place

February 4, 2023

OK, So this just happened

I get a call and I don't recognize the number, so I don't answer, and there was no message. But I'm curious, so I Google the phone number, and apparently it belongs to...


a local cemetery

February 4, 2023

Russia & the US Press-The Article the CJR Didn't Publish

Thanks to Emptywheel twitter

Two and a half years ago, the Columbia Journalism Review refused to publish Duncan Campbell’s investigation into The Nation magazine and its apparent support for Vladimir Putin. It is published here in full

The Nation’s Russia Problem
Duncan Campbell, 15 July 2020

One afternoon, five weeks before Election Day in 2016, on the 21st floor of a tower overlooking Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue, members of The Nation’s editorial advisory board gathered for a twice-annual meeting. Katrina van den Heuvel—the magazine’s editor, publisher, and owner—invited attendees to hear from a special guest, who had come to warn them that criticizing Donald Trump’s involvements with Russia, or his relationship with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, could trigger global nuclear annihilation. Van den Heuvel, who was 56, gestured to her husband, Stephen F. Cohen, then 77, a retired professor of Russian studies. Russia and the United States “were closer to war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis,” he told the board. He also derided Democrats and American media organizations for “demonization of Russian President Putin.”

Philip Green, a political theorist who had been on the board for forty years, listened with skepticism. Cohen’s theory, “presented with deadly and urgent seriousness,” he thought, appeared to be channeling the paranoia of the far-right. Others felt the same way. But afterward, Green says, “It became the party line.”

Cohen would go on to make the same argument in at least 160 Nation articles; more than a hundred talk radio show appearances; and on Russia’s state-owned international channel, Russia Today (RT). In many cases, his articles were “essentially transcribed radio programs that were unedited and did not go through other editorial filters,” according to Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor and investigative journalist. Accusing the Russian government of committing an act of war by hacking the Democratic National Committee, Cohen warned, might mean “the necessity of actual war, conceivably nuclear war, against Russia.” He wrote that “villainizing the Kremlin—without much evidence—is increasing the possibility of a US-Russian war.” Once Trump took office, Cohen branded media investigations of Russia’s involvement with the Trump campaign as “neo-McCarthyism” and “Kremlin-baiting.”

For these critiques, Cohen won praise from outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart, anathema to The Nation readership; soon, he began making periodic appearances on Tucker Carlson Tonight. “Today, in my scholarly, long-term judgment, relations between the United States and Russia are more dangerous than they have ever—let me repeat, ever—been, including the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen told Carlson in 2018.


entire article at https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/04/russia-and-the-us-press-the-article-the-cjr-didnt-publish/