Recorded July 25, 2004
Listen:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAudio
As the title indicates, this broadcast examines grave threats to what remains of American democracy. Much of the first half of the program examines the issue of electronic voting. Controlled by a small group of interconnected far-rightists, companies like Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia have proved notoriously unreliable in past elections. Significantly, the people in charge of these firms are also closely connected to the covert operations milieu of the 1980’s that spawned the Iran/Contra and Iraqgate scandals. The program reviews the possibility of a man-made earthquake affecting the election. In the context of the Machiavellian nature of this administration, it is worth noting that Machiavelli counseled that a leader destroy a society with democratic traditions, lest it regroup and restore those traditions. The program concludes with an examination of the profoundly anti-democratic attitudes of Paul Weyrich and those in power in the Bush administration.
Program Highlights Include: The Urosevich brothers and their profound influence on the development of both Diebold and ES&S—two of the companies at the epicenter of electronic voting; the relationship of the Urosevich brothers to the far-right wing Ahmanson family; the Ahmanson family’s links to Paul Weyrich’s Council on National Policy; the presence on the Council on National Policy of Iran/Contra players Oliver North and Gen. John Singlaub; the close relationship of Diebold, ES&S and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel; Diebold’s apparent role in helping to swing the calling of Florida for Bush in 2000; the suspicious performance of Diebold machines in the 2002 off-year elections; the suspicious death of Athan Gibbs (who developed a viable alternative to Diebold machines); General Tommy Franks’ prediction that a terrorist incident with WMD’s could lead to the imposition of a military-style government in the U.S.; the explicitly anti-democratic views of Paul Weyrich and his milieu; a statement by the secretary to former President Gerald Ford that the US entered World War II on the wrong side.
1. Beginning with a subject touched on in FTRs 466, 468, the program discusses the issue of electronic voting and the small cabal of extreme right-wingers at the foundation of the companies that manufacture these machines. One of the most important of these is the Diebold company. Headed by Wally O’Dell—an ardent Bush supporter—the company makes a number of automated devices such as ATM machines. Interestingly, Diebold’s voting machines are the only ones that do not have produce a verifiable paper trail. “ . . . If Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has his way, Diebold will receive a contract to supply touch screen electronic voting machines for much of the state. None of these Diebold machines will provide a paper receipt of the vote. Diebold, located in North Canton, Ohio, does its primary business in ATM and ticket-vending machines. Critics of Diebold point out that virtually every other machine the company makes provides a paper trail to verify the machine’s calculations. Oddly, only the voting machines lack this essential function.”(“Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” by Bob Fitrakis; The Free Press; 2/24/2004; p. 1.)
2. “State Senator Teresa Fedor of Toledo introduced Senate Bill 167 late last year mandating that every voting machine in Ohio generate a ‘voter verified paper audit trail.’ Secretary of State Blackwell has denounced any attempt to require a paper trail as an effort to ‘derail’ election reform. Blackwell’s political career is an interesting one: he emerged as a black activist in Cincinnati supporting municipal charter reform, became an elected Democrat, then an Independent, and now is a prominent Republican with his eyes on the governor’s mansion.” (Idem.)
3. The issue at the forefront of this discussion has come into sharp focus as a result of the electoral irregularities in the 2000 election. The 2002 Help America Vote Act may have actually contributed to the problem by mandating that electronic voting machines should take the place of punch card machines. “A joint study by the California and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology following the 2000 election determined that between 1.5 and 2 million votes were not counted due to confusing paper ballots or faulty equipment. The federal government’s solution to the problem was to pass the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. One of the law’s stated goals was ‘Replacement of punch card and lever voting machines.’ The new voting machines would be high-tech touch screen computers, but if there’s no paper trail, how do you know if there’s been a computer glitch? How can the results be trusted? And how do you recount to see if the actual votes match the computer’s tally?” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)
4. Many critics have focused on the irregularities that have plagued Diebold machines in the past. “Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot tampering in the 21st Century, argues that without a paper trail, these machines are open to massive voter fraud. Diebold has already placed some 50,000 machines in 37 states and their track record is causing Harris, Johns Hopkins University professors and others great concern. Johns Hopkins researchers at the Information Security Institute issued a report declaring that Diebold’s electronic voting software contained ‘stunning flaws.’ The researchers concluded that vote totals could be altered at the voting machines and by remote access. Diebold vigorously refuted the Johns Hopkins report, claiming the researchers came to ‘a multitude of false conclusions.’” (Ibid.; p. 2.)
5. “Perhaps to settle the issue, apparently an insider leaked documents from the Diebold election Systems website and posted internal documents from the company to Harris’ website. Diebold went to court to stop, according to court records, the ‘wholesale reproduction’ of some 13,000 pages of company material. The Associated Press reported in November 2003 that: ‘Computer programmers, ISPs and students at [at] least 20 universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received cease and desist letters’ from Diebold. A group of Swarthmore College students launched an ‘electronic civil disobedience’ campaign to keep the hacked documents permanently posted on the Internet.” (Idem.)
6. Irregularities in the Volusia County (Florida) Diebold machines appear to have led to the premature media call of Florida as having been won by Bush. (For more about the Florida electoral irregularities, see—among other programs—FTRs 259, 268.) “Harris writes that the documents expose how the mainstream media reversed their call projecting Al Gore as winner of Florida after someone ‘subtracted 16, 022 votes from Al Gore, and in still some undefined way, added 4000 erroneous votes to George W. Bush.’ Hours later, the votes were returned. One memo from Lana Hires of Global Election Systems, now Diebold, reads: ‘I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022 [votes] when it was uploaded.’ Another hacked internal memo, written by Talbot Iredale, Senior VP of Research and Development for Diebold Election Systems, documents ‘unauthorized’ replacement votes in Volusia County.” (Idem.)
7. “Harris also uncovered a revealing 87-page CBS news report and noted, ‘According to CBS documents, the erroneous 20,000 votes in Volusia was directly responsible for calling the election for Bush.’ The first person to call the election for Bush was Fox election analyst John Ellis, who had the advantage of conferring with his prominent cousins George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush.” (Idem.)
8. In examining the issue of electronic voting, it is essential to note how a small cabal of closely connected, extreme right-wingers dominates the few companies involved in making these machines. The main names are: Bob and Todd Urosevich, the Ahmanson family, Carolyn Hunt, Chuck Hagel, Diebold, ES&S. Note the relationships between these individuals and companies that dominate the electronic voting market. “Increasingly, investigative writers seeking an explanation have looked to Diebold’s history for clues. The electronic voting industry is dominated by only a few corporations—Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Diebold and ES&S combined to count an estimated 80% of U.S. black box electronic votes. In the early 1980’s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S’s originator, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained financing from the far-Right Ahmanson family in 1984, which purchased a 68% ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. After brothers William and Robert Ahmanson infused Data Mark with new capital, the name was changed to American Information Systems (AIS). California newspapers have long documented the Ahmanson family’s ties to right-wing evangelical Christian and Republican circles.” (Idem.)
9. Deeply involved in the capitalization of the companies that evolved into ES&S, the Ahmanson family is closely connected to the Council on National Policy, an institution dominated by far-right wingers closely identified with the covert operations of the 1980’s, such as the Iran/Contra and Iraqgate scandals. “In 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported, ‘ . . . primarily funded by evangelical Christians—particularly the wealthy Ahmanson family of Irvine—the [Discovery] Institute’s $1‑million annual program has produced 25 books, a stream of conferences and more than 100 fellowships for doctoral and postdoctoral research.’ The chief philanthropists of the Discovery Institute, that pushes creationist science and education in California, are Howard and Roberta Ahmanson. According to Group Watch, in the 1980’s Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. was a member of the highly secretive far-Right Council for National Policy, an organization that included Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other Iran-Contra scandal notables, as well as former Klan members like Richard Shoff. Ahmanson, heir to a savings and loan fortune, is little reported on in the mainstream U.S. press. But, English papers like The Independent are a bit more forthcoming on Ahmanson’s politics.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)
10. “ ‘On the right, figures such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson have given hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades to political projects both high (setting up the Heritage Foundation think-tank, the driving engine of the Reagan presidency) and low (bankrolling investigations into President Clinton’s sexual indiscretions and the suicide of the White House insider Vincent Foster),’ wrote The Independent last November. The Sunday Mail described an individual as, ‘ . . . a fundamentalist Christian more in the mould of U.S. multi-millionaire Howard Ahmanson, Jr., who uses his fortune to promote so-called traditional family values . . . by waving fortunes under their noses, Ahmanson has the ability to cajole candidates into backing his right-wing Christian agenda.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)
11. Note the role of Chuck Hagel in the development of ES&S, one of the companies deeply involved in the electronic voting business. The company grew considerably when it purchased BRC, founded in part by the far-right wing Hunt family of Texas. (The Hunts assisted in the founding of the Council on National Policy.) “Ahmanson is also a chief contributor to the Chalcedon Institute that supports the Christian reconstruction movement. The movement’s philosophy advocates, among other things, ‘mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards.’ The Ahmanson family sold their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.” (Idem.)
12. Did Hagel’s ES&S connection help with his “stunning” electoral upset? “In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and [in which] he maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s Es&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel’s first election victory was described as a ‘stunning upset’ by one Nebraska newspaper.” (Idem.)
13. “Hagel’s official biography states, ‘Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Hagel worked in the private sector as the President of McCarthy and Company, an investment banking firm based in Omaha, Nebraska and served as Chairman of the Board of American Information Systems.’ During the first Bush presidency, Hagel served as Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the 1990 Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations (G‑7 Summit).” (Idem.)
14. Again, note the incestuous structure of Diebold, ES&S and both firms’ relationship to Hagel and the Urosevich brothers. “Bob Urosevich was the Programmer and CEO at AIS, before being replaced by Hagel. Bob now heads Diebold Election Systems and his brother Todd is a top executive at ES&S. Bob created Diebold’s original electronic voting machine software. Thus, the brothers Urosevich, originally funded by the far Right, figure in the counting of approximately 80% of electronic voting in the United States.” (Idem.)
15. “Like Ohio, the State of Maryland was disturbed by the potential for massive electronic voter fraud. The voters of that state were reassured when the state hired SAIC to monitor Diebold’s systems. SAIC’s former CEO is Admiral Bill Owens. Owens served as a military aide to both Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, who now works with George H.W. Bush at the controversial Carlyle Group. Robert Gates, former CIA director and close friend of the Bush family, also served on the SAIC Board.” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)
16. More on the highly suspicious track record of Diebold and ES&S: “Wherever Diebold and ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow. Alastair Thompson, writing for scoop.co of New Zealand, explored whether or not the 2002 U.S. mid-term elections were ‘fixed by electronic voting machines supplied by Republican-affiliated companies.’ The scoop investigation concluded that: ‘The state where the biggest upset occurred, Georgia, is also the state that ran its election with the most electronic voting machines.’ Those machines were supplied by Diebold.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)
17. Note that Diebold machines returned identical vote counts for three Republican candidates in Texas in 2002. “Wired News reported that ‘ . . . a
former worker in Diebold’s Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machine before the state’s 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials.’ Questions were raised in Texas when three Republican candidates in Comal County each received exactly the same number of votes—18,181—on ES&S machines.” (Idem.)
18. Diebold installed uncertified software in machines in 17 California counties using their equipment. Manipulating vote counts was a key feature of the foreign covert operations of the Reagan and Bush (I) years. Recall that the Ahmansons (deeply involved with the development of the companies that make electronic voting machines and their software) were associated with people like Oliver North and John Singlaub—prime movers in many of those covert operations. “Following the 2003 California election, an audit of the company revealed that Diebold Election Systems voting machines installed uncertified software in all 17 counties using its equipment. Former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell writes that one of the favorite tactics of the CIA during the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980’s was to control countries by manipulating the election process. ‘CIA apologists leap up and say, ‘Well, most of these things are not so bloody.’ And that’s true. You’re giving politicians some money so he’ll throw his [sic] party in this direction or that one, or make false speeches on your behalf, or something like that. It may be non-violent, but it’s still illegal intervention in other countries’ affairs, raising the question of whether or not we’re going to have a world in which laws, rules of behavior are respected,’ Stockwell wrote. Documents illustrate that the Reagan and Bush administrations supported computer manipulation in both Noriega’s rise to power in Panama and in Marcos’ attempt to retain power in the Philippines. Many of the Reagan administration’s staunchest supporters were members of the Council on National Policy.” (Idem.)
19. Athan Gibbs and his TruVote International machines provided one ray of hope for those concerned about the perils of electronic voting. “Ohio Senator Fedor continues to fight valiantly for Senate Bill 167 and the Holy Grail of the ‘voter verified paper audit trail.’ Proponents of a paper trail were emboldened when Athan Gibbs, President and CEO of TruVote International, demonstrated a voting machine at a vendor’s fair in Columbus that provides two separate voting receipts. The first paper receipt displays the voter’s touch screen selection under plexiglass that falls into a lockbox after the voter approves. Also, the TruVote system provides the voter with a receipt that includes a unique voter ID and pin number which can be used to call in to a voter audit internet connection to make sure the vote cast was actually counted. Brooks Thomas, Coordinator of Elections in Tennessee, stated, ‘I’ve not seen anything that compares to the Gibbs’ TruVote validation system. . . .’ The Assistant Secretary of State of Georgia, Terrel L. Slayton, Jr., claimed Gibbs had come up with the ‘perfect solution.’ . . .” (Idem.)
20. HR 2239 is one piece of legislation that would require a paper voting trail for all electronic voting machines. “ . . . U.S. Representative Rush Holt introduced HR 2239, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 that would require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail so that voters may verify that their screen touches match their actual vote. Election officials would also have a paper trail for recounts. As Blackwell pressures the Ohio legislature to adopt electronic voting machines without a paper trail, Athan Gibbs wonders, ‘Why would you buy a voting machine from a company like Diebold which provides a paper trail for every single machine it makes except its voting machines? And then, when you ask it to verify its numbers, it hides behind ‘trade secrets.’ Maybe the Diebold decision makes sense, if you believe, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, that democracy is too important to leave up to the votes of the people.” (Ibid.; p. 5.)
21. The broadcast then reviews the death of the aforementioned Athan Gibbs, a critic of computer voting machines that do not provide a paper trail. Gibbs, who (as noted above) had developed a technology that assured a viable accounting of votes, was killed in a car/truck collision in Texas. “The subject line on yesterday’s e‑mail read: ‘Another mysterious accident solves a Bush problem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold lives.’ The attached news story briefly described the untimely Friday, March 12th death of perhaps America’s most influential advocate of a verified voting paper trail in the era of touch screen computer voting. Gibbs, an accountant for more than 30 years and the inventor of the TruVote system, died when his vehicle collided with an 18-wheeled truck which rolled his Chevy Blazer several times and forced it over the highway retaining wall where it came to rest on its roof. . . .” (“Mysterious Death Benefits Bush” by Bob Fitrakis; Coastal Post; 4/2004; p. 1.)
22. Reviewing (from FTR#468) an emphatically speculative item, the program examines recent forecasts of earthquake activity for California later this year. This information is presented in the context of a number of past broadcasts in which it has been established that technology exists for the deliberate triggering of earthquakes, where sufficient slippage exists on a fault system to produce such an event. (For more about this, see FTR#69. FTRs 434, 440 discuss the possibility of a man-made quake in California calculated to affect the election results.) The possibility that a major quake occurring shortly before the election might have a significant impact on the outcome should be carefully considered. Such a disaster could lead to the delay or cancellation of the election in California and would have far-reaching consequences for the U.S. as well. If the quake were severe, it could lead to an imposition of martial law in the U.S., due to the far-reaching economic and ecological consequences attendant upon such an event. A major California quake would also hand political center stage to the Terminator and George W. They could be packaged as the saviors of California. The grateful citizens’ [delayed] votes would go to Bush, even though Schwarzenegger will be the one who garners most of the action. Such an event could well be used to position Schwarzenegger for a run for national office. “Scientists have found striking evidence of a three-year cycle of earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault, a development that might lead to the first practical short-term earthquake forecasting in central California. The new research, which one expert called a tour de force of geoscience, suggests that the next peak of the cycle is likely to come late this year. . . .”
(“San Andreas Quakes Show Cyclical Pattern: UC-Berkeley Study Finds Fault Slipping in Periodic Bursts” by Keay Davidson; San Francisco Chronicle; 1/9/2004; p. 1.)
23. Yet another prediction of a quake for California for later this year. “A US geophysicist has set the scientific world ablaze by claiming to have cracked a holy grail: accurate earthquake prediction, and warning that a big one will soon hit southern California. A Russian-born University of California at Los Angeles professor Vladimi
r Keilis-Borok says he can foresee major quakes by tracking minor temblors and historical patterns in seismic hotspots that could indicate more violent shaking is on the way. And he has made a chilling prediction that a quake measuring at least 6.4 magnitude on the Richter scale will hit a 31,200-square-kilometer (12,000-square-mile) area of southern California by September 5. . . .”
(“Expert Warns California to Brace for Big Quake by September” (AFP); Yahoo.com; 4/15/2004; pp. 1–2.)
24. The program notes that Schwarzenegger recently replaced the head of the California National Guard with a Republican. This may, or may not be of significance. Certainly, the National Guard will be centrally involved in any major disaster response in California. Whether or not this is coincidental or of any significance at all remains to be seen. Schwarzenegger also recently replaced the head of the California Highway Patrol—another institution that would be pivotally involved in a major emergency response by the state’s infrastructure. “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger abruptly removed Maj. Gen. Paul Monroe as commander of the California National Guard on Tuesday and replaced him with Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres, who has served as director of the guard’s office of homeland security. . . . His [Monroe’s] replacement, Eres, 59, takes over immediately. Eres rose through the ranks during 35 years of service in the National Guard. In civilian life, he is senior partner in the Sacramento law firm of Nossaman, Gunthner, Knox & Elliott. He is a Republican. Monroe is a Democrat. . . .”
(“Schwarzenegger Removes National Guard Commander” by Carl Nolte; San Francisco Chronicle; 3/4/2004; p. A19.)
25. In his introduction to the portion of the program dealing with California quake predictions, Mr. Emory notes that this information falls in a gray area that hovers between “reality” and “paranoia.” In that same vein, a [hopefully] humorous comment by Florida Governor Jeb Bush may well be nothing more than the tasteless joke it appears to be. Let’s hope so, anyway. “ . . . Gov. Jeb Bush joked during a Florida Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the people of San Francisco may be endangered and, ‘That’s probably good news for the country.’ The subject was environmental land and Bush was looking at a map showing locations with a lot of different wildlife. ‘It looks like the people of San Francisco are an endangered species, which may not be a bad thing. That’s probably good news for the country.’ People in the room broke into laughter. ‘Did I just say that out loud?’ the governor asked.’”
(“Jeb Bush Says People of San Francisco Are Endangered Species” by Jim Sparkman; ChronWatch; 11/17/2003; p. 1.)
26. Among the factors mandating discussion of these troublesome and (to some) far-fetched ruminations concerning possible seismic subversion of the electoral and democratic processes is the overtly Machiavellian nature of this administration. One of the stratagems that Machiavelli counseled in The Prince was the deliberate use of annihilation to interdict a population’s renascent democratic instincts. “Indeed, there is no surer way of keeping possession than by devastation. Whoever becomes the master of a city accustomed to freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed himself; because, when there is a rebellion, such a city justifies itself by calling on the name of liberty and its ancient institutions, never forgotten despite the passing of time and the benefits received from the new ruler. Whatever the conqueror’s actions or foresight, if the inhabitants are not dispersed and scattered, they will forget neither that name nor those institutions; and at first opportunity they will at once have recourse to them, as did Pisa after having been kept in servitude for a hundred years by the Florentines. . . .But in republics there is more life, more hatred, a greater desire for revenge; the memory of their ancient liberty does not and cannot let them rest; in their case the surest way is to wipe them out. . . .”
(The Prince; Niccolo Machiavelli; Penguin Classics [translated by George Bull]; ISBN 0–14-044107–7; pp. 48–49.)
27. There has been widespread speculation about the possibility of a terrorist incident that might affect the election. General Tommy Franks gave an interview in late 2003 in which he weighed the grave danger to American democracy that a terrorist incident with WMD’s (weapons of mass destruction) would pose. Those who see Al Qaeda and related organizations as simple agent-provacateurs controlled by the Bush administration are making a serious mistake. Both Al Qaeda and the Bush administration are tools of the Underground Reich—Bush & co. do not control Al Qaeda. Nonetheless, many in this administration would welcome another deadly terrorist incident as a vehicle for eliminating what remains of American democracy. (As discussed in—among other programs—FTRs 372, 412, 441, 471—this administration and its allies might be more closely compared with the French power elite in the pre-World War II period. They actively welcomed the German victory in World War II, which they saw as the ideal vehicle for eliminating French democracy. The relationship between this administration and Al Qaeda is analogous to the relationship between the French power elite and the German invaders. The German invasion of France in World War II was not a provocation intended to expand French influence. Nonetheless, it was anticipated and greatly aided by the French power elite, who collaborated enthusiastically with the Third Reich.) “Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Afficionado. In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.”
(“Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack” by John O. Edwards; NewsMax.com; 12/21/2003; p. 1.)
28. “Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that ‘the worst thing that could happen’ is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties. If that happens, Franks said, ‘ . . . the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.’” (Idem.)
29. “Franks then offered ‘in a practical sense’ what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack. ‘It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Weste
rn world—it may be in the United States of America—that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.’” (Idem.)
30. The program takes a look at the ideology of Paul Weyrich. It is worth noting the close relationship between Weyrich’s Council on National Policy and the developers of Diebold, ES&S etc. (Weyrich is also the founder of the Free Congress Foundation, one of the focal points of FTR#465.) As we look ahead to the elections, we should not fail to note the enthusiasm with which the far-right elements associated with the Bush administration view the elimination of the institutions of American democracy. Their French counterparts in the pre-World War II period held similar attitudes. It remains to be seen whether the “Vichy Americans” of the Bush administration facilitate the destruction of our democracy. “On January 28, 2002, The American Prospect, Inc. published ‘Fair-Weather Friend; Going Down as it Came Up; School Sprays; They’re Back!’ a brief excerpt reads: ‘Two years ago, ur-conservative Paul Weyrich stunned the religious right by calling for a retreat from temporal concerns. ‘Conservatives have learned to succeed in politics,’ he wrote in an open letter that’s still available on the Web site. ‘But that did not result in the adoption of our agenda. The reason, I think, is that politics itself has failed. And politics has failed because of the collapse of the culture.’ The right no longer had a ‘moral majority,’ he wrote. The solution? ‘To look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture.’ In essence, he said, the religious right should espouse cultural and political separatism—by setting up its own schools, television networks, and even courts of law. The rest of the country breathed a sigh of relief. No more silly Disney boycotts by southern Baptists. No more flaky school-board members, pushing creationism. No more Paul Weyrich!”
(“Paul Weyrich’s Teaching Manual?”; pp. 1–2.)
31. “ ‘The whew, alas, was premature. It turns out that what Weyrich and his folks really had in mind was less separatism than guerilla warfare—a ‘New Traditionalist’ movement that, according to its manifesto, written by Weyrich protégé Eric Heubeck and bearing the grandiose title ‘The Integration of Theory and Practice: A program for the New Traditionalist Movement,’ would seek ‘to advance a true traditionalist counter-culture based on virtue, excellence, and self-discipline.’ The New Traditionalists—who sound a lot like the Old Traditionalists—will ‘reject the materialism, hedonism, consumerism, egoism, and the cult of self-actualization which permeate modern life.’ Heubeck elaborates: ‘We will not try to reform existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them. [Emphasis added.] We will endeavor to knock our opponents off-balance and unsettle them at every opportunity. . .’” (Ibid.; p. 2.)
32. “ . . . The Bush administration is apparently quite cozy with Weyrich. This quote from a Time magazine article is apropos, Time magazine wrote this: ‘Each Wednesday, Rove dispatches a top administration official to attend the regular conservative-coalition lunches held at Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation. When activists call his office with a problem, Rove doesn’t pass them off to an aide. He often responds himself. When Weyrich heard a few weeks that Bush’s budget slashed funding for a favorite project called the Police Corps, which gives scholarships and training to police cadets, he complained to the White House. To Weyrich’s surprise, Rove called back, ‘We’ve taken care of it,’ Rove said. ‘The problem is solved.’” (Idem.)
33. Concluding with an anecdote illustrative of the anti-Democratic, pro-fascist views present in the American political establishment, the program presents an encounter a Washington lobbyist had with a prominent Southern reactionary His views were echoed by the private secretary to then House Minority leader [and later President] Gerald Ford. “In January 1968, Haden Kirkpatrick, publisher of racing’s bible, Thoroughbred Record, and his wife gave a small dinner party at the Pavillon Restaurant in New York. During dinner, we all started discussing the state of national and international affairs. Haden turned to me and said: ‘The trouble is and always has been Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He got us in the Second World War on the wrong side.’ I was speechless.”
(The Washington Pay-Off; by Robert N. Winter-Berger; Copyright 1972 by Robert N. Winter-Berger; Lyle Stuart, Inc. [HC]; ISBN 73–185421; p. 297.)
34. “Several days later, back in Washington, I recounted this story to Mildred Leonard, for many years Jerry Ford’s private secretary. [This refers to former House Minority Leader, Vice-President and President Gerald Ford.] Before I could add my personal reaction to Haden’s remark, Mildred looked up at me and said: ‘You know, he’s right, Mr. Winter-Berger.’ I was even more amazed, hearing this in the Capitol of the United States from the secretary of the House Minority Leader.” (Idem.)
Looking Back from 1984
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is now raising money to promote the GOP’s new push to rig the electoral college:
A word of advice to any donors to Blackwell’s campaign: don’t plan on any audits for how the money is spent. That’s not how he rolls:
The US’s epidemic of voter-fraud fraud just keeps getting worse:
Huh, so Kansas’s Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, was claiming last fall that the US Attorney based in Kansas was ignoring all these cases of voter fraud that his office was sending them. But upon review it turns out that they didn’t send anything at all.
Clearly, the solution here for how to address the issue of Kris Kobach’s fantasy voter fraud is to give Kobach even more power to prosecute all these cases himself, without relying on federal prosecutors. Or local prosecutors. Yeah, that should do the trick:
Ok, this clarifies things a bit regarding why Kris Kobach claimed there was all this voter fraud going on but didn’t actually send the cases to the US Attorney’s office: Kris Kobach decided to send these cases to county prosecutors instead. Specifically, after review 1.7 million votes cast in 2010 and 2012, Kobach’s office from a whole eighteen cases of possible voter fraud. Fifteen of those eighteen cases were referred to county prosecutors. And since action was taken in only seven of those fifteen cases, Kris Kobach now wants the Kansas state laws changed to give him the power to prosecute all these voter fraud cases all on his own.
So will Kansas’s legislature grant Kobach his wish and allow an Attorney General was a track record of exaggerating or lying about the extent of voter fraud cases act so he can protect the public from 0.001% voter fraud? Yes. Yes they will:
So the Kansas legislature (barely) gave Kobach the green light to begin aggressively prosecuting all the voter fraud cases he can find. And, interestingly, just last month he claims to have found 100 cases of fraud in Kansas alone in 2014, which, if real, would appear to suggest a massive increase in the amount of voter fraud from previous years given Kobach’s own findings of 18 cases among 1.7 votes cast in 2010/2012 and only 14 cases the 22 million votes his office review in 2013.
So once governor Brownback signs this new power into law we’ll presumably get to see just what kinds of cases trigger Kris Kobach’s fraud antennae. But since he claimed that those 100 potential cases were cases of “double voting”, that presumably means he hasn’t started looking into other far more serious types of vote fraud. Like this:
So will Kobach takes a look into that kind of voter fraud once he has no excuses whatsoever for ignoring it? We’ll see...
Check out the results of the DEF CON security conference “Voting Machine Hacking Village”, a contest to hack the roughly 30 different voting machines over a three day period. It’s the kind of results that should make one question the results of elections across the US: by the end of the contest every last voting machine was hacked:
“The rickroll stunt was just one hack at the security conference DEF CON, which ran a three-day Voting Machine Hacking Village to test the security of various machines and networks used in US elections. By the end of the weekend, every one of the roughly 30 machines at the village, including those used to tabulate votes and to check voters in when they go to the polls, had been hacked. Even though several of the exploits ended up paying tribute to Astley, they’re not jokes—they also present a serious lesson about the security vulnerabilities in voting machines that leave them open to tampering and manipulation. And the more vulnerable our voting infrastructure is shown to be, the less confidence voters may feel.”
30 different machines and every last one was hacked. Within a few days. And if you happen to think this represents a substantial risk to the integrity of US elections, surprise!, the GOP strongly disagrees, in word and action:
“However, in their FY2018 funding proposal, Republicans are going after the small but highly successful agency that protects the integrity of our voting systems: the Election Assistance Commission. In June, House Republicans included a provision in their Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill that would abolish the Election Assistance Commission.”
And what was the GOP’s excuse for gutting the funding of the federal agency tasked with trying to actually address these issues? They says this underfunded and understaffed agency that has no rule-making authority is a waste of money, part of a bloated bureaucracy, and a violation of states-rights:
So for everyone in the US, welcome to Voting Machine Hacking Village! It’s where you live. And have been living for a while, so the welcomes aren’t really necessary. Regardless, welcome home!
Here’s an example of how the US political system remains wildly vulnerable to bad faith actors and exceedingly simple disinformation campaigns. In this case it appears to be a disinformation campaign started by a single anonymous snarky tweet that ended up getting amplified by a twitter-bot network and resulted in the widespread assertions by Republicans that last week’s election in Kentucky was somehow rigged: former Kentucky governor Matt Bevin finally conceded defeat today in last week’s election to Democrat Matt Beshear. The reason for the delay in admitting defeat was Bevin’s request for a recount. The fact that a recount was requested isn’t controversial but the reason for that request turns out to be a perfect example of how bad faith acceptance of low quality disinformation is now the norm for Republican politics and represents a real threat to democracy by casually leading to the validity of election results. Shortly after it became clear Bevin was going to lose, a flood of allegations about “irregularities” in the election flood twitter making allegations like thousands of absentee ballots being illegally counted. There was no actual basis for the claims and one of the most widely cited claim came from a single tweet by a user @Overlordkraken1 who tweeted out, “just shredded a box of Republican mail in ballots,” adding “Bye bye Bevin.” The tweet listed the user’s location as Louisville, but with Louisville misspelled. Bot networks immediately pounced on these evidence-free claims and soon a right-wing meme born:
“While the suspended account was likely a real person just “trolling” with the shredding tweet, Blocq said “thousands” of bot accounts spread the screenshot in parallel with other tweets alleging that the election was rigged, showing “this is not a small operation... it is not just one person doing this.””
A single troll tweet gets picked up by a bot network and all of a sudden that joke tweet gets treated as real, despite the fact that none of the people who ended up referring to these memes had any proof whatsoever. Including Bevin’s campaign, which relied on these vague allegations for his recount demand but remained silent when asked for evidence.
And while Bevin’s campaign has now finally conceded the race, it’s not like the meme that the election was somehow stolen by the Democrats is going to just go away. Especially since, in the days following the election, Bevin went around talking about how he didn’t want to win a “dirty election” and suggesting that it wasn’t legitimate:
““I will tell you this, I would rather lose a clean election than to win a dirty election and I’ll be darned if I want to lose a dirty election. So to that end, let’s just make sure it’s legit,” he said.”
He doesn’t want to “win dirty”. But he sure has no problem losing dirty. That’s exactly what this his: the Republicans using a twitter-bot meme campaign to paint the incoming Democratic administration as illegitimate and “dirty”. And they clearly know this is dirty because they clearly know there’s no actual evidence. Otherwise they would point to it.
And note that this isn’t just Bevin’s campaign opportunistically using these twitter memes. Just yesterday, a newly formed group calling itself Citizens for Election Integrity held a news conference calling for an investigation into the “irregularities”. Bevin himself tweeted in support of the group, saying “For those interested in the integrity of the election process in Kentucky and in America (which should be ALL of us), this looks like an event worth attending...” The group claims to just be self-described “moms”, but it turns out the group’s executive director, Erika Calihan, was appointed by Bevin to the Judicial Nominating Commission for the Kentucky Court of Appeals and Supreme Court in January. One of the group’s claims is that the election was hacked but they provided no credible evidence:
“The group is newly created, has no website and only created a Facebook page Monday. Its executive director, Erika Calihan, supported Bevin’s campaign and was appointed by Bevin to the Judicial Nominating Commission for the Kentucky Court of Appeals and Supreme Court in January.”
The newly form group of “moms” asserting the election was hacked just happens to have an executive director who was a Bevin political appointee this year. What a coincidence. But they assure us they’re just concerned moms:
And as with Bevin, when asked for evidence of their claims, they provide the flimsy examples and call for an investigation. In other words, they know they are making baseless claims:
But hey, at least we finally found a way to make the GOP take the real threat of hacking electronic voting machines seriously. Of course, making baseless claims isn’t really taking this seriously and, if anything, will damage the credibility of future legitimate concerns about election hacking. But it’s progress. Sort of.
Doubts over whether or not President Trump will peacefully leave office are surging again. For reasons that are now typical: an article came out about a Republican plot to steal the election and then Trump said something crazy about the election. Specifically, the Atlantic just published a piece about Republican plans to guarantee a Trump victory that includes maneuvers like ordering the seizure of ballots and asking states to choose the electors themselves — a move that would override the vote — justified under the premise that mail-in ballots are so woefully corrupted by Democratic-led voter fraud efforts that the only option is to ignore the vote. Then Trump himself refused to answer affirmatively when directly asked during a press conference whether or not he can guarantee the peaceful transfer of power, saying, “Well, we’ll have to see what happens,” and going on to make disturbing statements about how mail-in ballots should be stopped instead.
So with allegations of mass mail-in voter fraud set to be a core Big Lie the Republicans are going to rely on to steal another presidential election it raises an interesting question about the propaganda efforts that would be used to carry this out: will Hans Spakovsky, the GOP’s long-standing peddler of fraudulent voter fraud allegations, be recognized on one of the key sources of Trump’s mail-in voter fraud claims? It’s a pretty relevant question given that Spakovsky has a long track record of being proven wrong but continues to be treated as a credible expert by Republicans. Recall how Spakovksy’s work for Republicans on court cases in recent years had to be done in secret because his very presence on the case damaged the credibility of the Republican side in the eyes of federal judges. That’s how toxic the guy is when you step outside the right-wing bubble.
It’s also worth recalling how, back in 2012, one of Spakovsky’s chief partners in creating promoting the GOP’s voter fraud hoax, John Fund, was promoting absentee fraud as a looming danger for the election and was fearing the US would experience “six or seven Floridas this November” where the state results are locked up in court and the victor enters or continues office under a cloud of questions over their legitimacy. So the scenario that Trump is openly predicting and basically ensuring takes place in 2020 — preventing the counting of the vote under of wave of contested state elections — is a scenario Fund and Spakovksy were planning out in 2012, which is reminder that Trump probably isn’t just winging it as he implements this strategy. This has probably been in the GOP play book for years.
But as the following ProPublica piece describes, there’s another reason Hans Spakovsky — and the integrity and quality of his work — should probably become part of the national discourse if this electoral doomsday scenario plays out: it turns out he’s been holding meeting with secretaries of state for months now warning them about voter fraud scenarios and giving them advise on how to mitigate that voter fraud. And he’s only been giving these meeting to Republican secretaries of state in secret and has been giving advice like preventing more than one mail-in drop-off box in an entire county. And while Spakovsky hasn’t been publicly speaking out about mail-in voting this year he has previously argued that only the elderly and those with health risks should not vote absentee in any form. So he’s in favor of rolling back absentee voting even more than the pre-pandemic rules and this is the GOP’s voter-fraud guru. It’s all big hint that Trump isn’t running some cockamamie ‘voter fraud’ fraud scheme he come up with on his own. He’s running a cockamamie scheme the GOP has probably had ready to go for years and Hans Spakovsky is the person who most likely crafted it:
“That was the second email Shaffer sent von Spakovsky’s office that day. Earlier, he had RSVP’d to an Aug. 4 virtual briefing hosted by the conservative activist. Secretaries of state are responsible for overseeing elections, and during the pandemic von Spakovsky has organized at least two remote, off-the-record strategy sessions exclusively for Republican secretaries and their staffs to discuss voting security amid what will be one of the most contested and unusual elections in generations, ProPublica reported last week.”
Exclusive secret off-the-record remote meetings for Republican secretaries of state only with Hans Spakovksy. And in the case of Ohio, one of the secret meetings with Spakovksy took place right before the Republican secretary of state suddenly issued the one-drop-box-per-county order. That’s not like super suspicious or anything...
And note how these secret Republicans-only meetings for state election administrators with Spakovksy have been going on since Trump was elected. These seeds were planted a while ago. The lesson from Hans Spakovsky is that if you apply yourself and never give up you too can grow up to craft the lie that will destroy your country:
Will Spakovsky’s secret leadership role in this scheme end up becoming part of the national story when the upcoming election nightmare begins to play out or will he remain a GOP shadow minion? Will Spakovksy’s track-record of making false assertions be highlighted to the public? Might this be a reason he’s holding these meetings in secret and not publicly pushing his voter fraud claims? These are some of the questions raised by the fact that the plot to destroy American democracy appears to be an old Spakovsky-brand plot.
Did President Trump’s legal challenges to the election results finally ‘jump the shark’? That’s at least one way to interpret what transpired over the weekend. First we had Sidney Powell ‘release the Kraken’ on Thursday by making allegations of a vast international conspiracy to steal the US presidential election for Joe Biden (but not any of the down-ballot races for some reason) centered around the voting machine firm Smartmatic. Powell was standing right next to the rest of Trump’s legal team — Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis — when she made these statements.
On Saturday, Powell then went on Newsmax and told the audience that Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, was involved with this international conspiracy. And now only was Georgia stolen from Trump, but the vote rigging also cheated Republican Doug Collins — a major Trump backer — from winning the second-place spot in one of Georgia’s two senate races this year over fellow Republican Kelly Loeffler. Loeffler is facing a run-off election against Democrat Raphael Warnock in January. So Powell basically alleged Georgia’s Republicans are in on the voter fraud. On Sunday, Giuliani and Ellis formally disowned Powell and asserted she was never actually part of Trump’s legal team. Powell insists she is still working on exposing the vast international voter fraud conspiracy.
We’ll see if we hear anything more from Sidney Powell and how this fiasco might impact the Trump team’s vast voter fraud allegations. But it’s worth noting one of the more amazing developments related to Georgia’s elections that’s emerged in all of this: Georgia has LONG been the most notorious state in terms of using old electronic voting machines THAT LACK A PAPER TRAIL OR ANY VIABLE MEANS OF DOING RECOUNTS. Georgia used the same old Diebold-manufactured electronic voting From 2002 UNTIL 2020. It was only in 2019 when Georgia finalized the purchase of new Dominion Systems ballot-marking devices, giving the state something resembling a paper trail for the first time in 18 years. And for 18 years, Georgia has been the state most known for ‘red-shift’ in the actual electoral outcome, where the Republicans were consistently the beneficiaries whenever the counted voted deviate from polls and the expected outcomes. Bringing national attention to Georgia’s troublesome electronic voting machines NOW seems like a wild gambit. Are Republicans SURE they want a real review of Georgia’s electronic voting systems? Because that seems like the kind of thing the Democrats would love to see happen. Or at least they should.
So in addition to seeing how far the Trump team can go in promoting its vast Smartmatic/Dominion electronic voting machine fraud story, we now also get to watch and see how successfully the Republicans and the media can go in avoiding any mention of the fact that Georgia has been the likely ground zero for REPUBLICAN electronic voting machine fraud from 2002–2020 and that there’s NEVER been any meaningful investigation of this. Now that Powell is claiming Georgia’s REPUBLICANS are in on this 2020 fraud it’s going to be a lot harder to ignore the prior 18 years when Republicans uniformly ruled the state.
Ok, first, here’s a TPM summarizing the conspiracy allegation that the full Trump legal team appeared to be backing during their press conference on Thursday involving Smartmatic and Dominion. The evidence Powell provided for the conspiracy was a single affidavit from someone who claimed they observed votes being manipulated in Venezuela’s elections using Smartmatic software in 2013. As the article notes, that affidavit was as part of the legal effort to prevent the certification of Georgia’s vote, so the evidence for mass voter fraud using Smartmatic software in Georgia (on Dominion voting machines) consists of a someone claiming they witnessed Smartmatic software being used to manipulate Venezuela’s election in 2013:
“So far, neither the Trump campaign nor Powell have tried to convince a judge under penalty of perjury that seedy voting software, communists, bribery or widespread, systematic fraud are to blame for Trump’s loss. And neither responded to TPM’s questions Monday.”
It’s a clue: None of the many claims made before the press have been made in court. Although someone did sign an affidavit claiming they witnessed Smartmatic software being used in Venezuela to manipulate the vote there in 2013. It’s not exactly compelling evidence, especially since there’s no evidence that Dominion voting systems uses Smartmatic’s software:
And since the crux of Powell’s allegations are that Dominion was using Smartmatic’s software, it’s worth noting that both companies are completely denying any relationship at all. There is one relationship though: Smartmatic bought Sequoia Voting Systems in 2005 and sold it a couple years later. Recall how Sequoia had ties to both the GOP and organized crime. In 2010, Dominion purchased Sequoia. This was the same year Dominion purchased the remnants of Diebold’s election systems. So it’s hypothetically conceivable that Smartmatic could have some sort of ability to influence the votes recorded on Dominion’s systems if Smartmatic embedded various ‘bugs’ in Sequoia’s software back in 2006–2007 that provides remote access to the machines and those ‘bugs’ were carried through all the way to Dominion’s software today, more than a decade later. But that’s not the allegation the Trump team is making. Instead, they’re claiming that Smartmatic secretly owns Dominion through an intermediary called Indra and all of the software used on Dominion’s machines are Smartmatic software. No evidence of this exists:
““Dominion is a company that’s owned by another company called Smartmatic through an intermediary company named Indra,” Giuliani told Fox Business host Lou Dobbs in an interview on Nov. 12. “Dominion is a Canadian company but all of its software is Smartmatic software.””
Dominion is secretly owned by Smartmatic and uses Smartmatic’s software. THAT’s the core of the Trump team’s voter fraud arguments. Arguments that are complicated by the fact that there’s no evidence that Smartmatic owns Dominion and no evidence of Smartmatic’s software being used anywhere in the US outside of Los Angeles county in 2020. The closet relationship we can find between Smartmatic and Dominion is the fact they’ve both owned Sequoia:
So has Dominion just been using Sequoia software without touching or even examining the code since it was purchased in 2010? That’s the allegation the Trump team is making...along with the allegation that Smartmatic secretly owns Dominion. And while there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of this, it’s noteworthy that Smartmatic actually publicly charged the Venezuelan government with manipulating votes in 2017. So if Smartmatic is part of an international communist conspiracy it’s not very good at it:
And if we’re asking whether or not Dominion is still using Sequoia’s software, potentially giving outsiders the ability to remotely execute any ‘bugs’ that may have been embedded in that software, we have to ask the same about Dominion’s purchase of Diebold. Are Dominion’s machine’s today still using Diebold software? Has that software been examined for any ‘bugs’? It’s a question that’s not just relevant for the 2020 election. For Georgia, it’s a question that’s relevant for all the other elections going back to 2002. Because as Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger pointed out a couple of weeks ago, this is the first time since 2002 that Georgia has even had a paper trail to audit.
From 2002–2018, recounts in Georgia were effectively impossible...along with Democrats winning statewide elections:
““Because we now have that verifiable paper ballot, for the first time in 18 years we’re going to have something to count instead of just pressing a button and getting the same answer,” Raffensperger said, referring to the state’s new voting system that creates a paper trail. “So, we’ll be counting every single piece of paper, every single ballot, every single lawfully cast legal ballot.””
From 2002–2020, the closest thing Georgia could come to a recount is just pushing a button that gives the same answer. Completely unverifiable voting on Diebold machines. Why isn’t the Trump team worried about Dominion’s purchase of Diebold’s voting systems in 2010 too? Not a peep about it. Hmmm...
And note the importance of the hand-recount Georgia ordered: As we’ve seen, even electronic voting machines that print out paper ballots can be rigged. That’s because these machines print out the voters’ preferences BUT ALSO PRINT A BARCODE THAT ENCODES THE VOTERS’ SELECTIONS AND ITS THE BARCODE THAT IS READ WHEN AUTOMATIC RECOUNTS TAKE PLACE. So it’s technically possible to rig an election where the information is ONLY switched in the Barcode but not the printed selection the voters see. But in Georgia’s case, they are having people read the actual printed voter selections instead of relying on the barcodes:
As we can see, Georgia’s labor-intensive recount is also effectively an audit for tabulator device rigging. Something that wasn’t at all possible from 2002–2020.
So as this hurricane of vote rigging allegations proceeds to play out, let’s hope to see a lot more focus on vote rigging in Georgia. Republican vote rigging from 2002–2018 using Diebold machines, in particular.
What will end up being a bigger scandal: the Department of Justice abuses the Trump administration managed to actually pull off, or the schemes they tried to pull off but were just too insane for complete? It’s a question raised by the recent string of DOJ abuse stories. Potentially serious abuses. We had the story of Trump ordering the DOJ to spy on Democrats and their families as some sort of leak probe in 2017 and 2018 (which raises all sort of interesting questions about spying outside the DOJ). At the same time, we got reports that Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was pressuring the DOJ to seriously investigate the ‘ItalyGate’ claims being pushed by Trump supporters following his 2020 election loss. The claim centers around the idea that an Italian defense contractor teamed up with the US embassy in Rome to use satellites to switch the vote counts from Trump to Biden. Two stories about Trump DOJ abuses. The latter attempted and the former actually executed.
It’s the kind of news theme that show raise all sorts of questions about not just how many other yet-to-be discovered DOJ corruption attempts took place, but also questions about just how deep this rot goes within the US legal establishment. Because as the following article should make clear, these stories aren’t just stories about the profound corruption of the Trump administration because the Trump administration itself is just a sub-chapter in the much broader story of the profound corruption of the contemporary US conservative movement. The organized billionaire-financed conservative movement that took over the GOP years ago, built a giant disinfotainment media complex, and fomented the bulk of the far right conspiratorial worldview detached enough from reality to pave the way for a figure like Trump.
As TPM just reported, it turns out the ItalyGate story has a deeply ‘establishment’ origin. And it’s exactly the establishment ties we should have expected: The group that appears to be one of the earliest pushers of ItalyGate is Florida non-profit called Nations in Action. And sitting on the board of Nations in Action is none other than Hans von Spakovksy, the GOP’s long-standing purveyor of mass voter-fraud claims. Recall how Spakovsky was holding Republican-only meetings with state election administrators following Trump’s victory in 2016, where he would promote a broad array of exactly the kind of mass voter-fraud claims that that GOP has been pushing through the 2020 election cycle and beyond. Also recall how Spakovksy is considered to be so lacking in credibility that his work for Republicans on legal cases in recent years has been done in secret due to fears his involvement will damage the credibility of their case in the eye of the courts.
That’s the guy sitting on the board Nations in Action. The group is run by Maria Zack, who was one of the first people known to push the ItalyGate theory back in December of 2020. Nations in action was incorporated in 2017 by longtime conservative election law firm, Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky. Recall how that law firm is at the heart of the right-wing dark money complex. It’s an indication of the group’s connections to the billionaire-funded conservative establishment.
While it’s not known exactly when the Trump White House became interested in the ItalyGate theory, Zack claims she told Donald Trump personally about the theory during a Christmas Eve event at Mar-a-Lago. Meadows ended up sending the DOJ the now-infamous letter asking them to investigate ItalyGate on December 30.
During the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection, Zack was broadcasting live during an interview done in the back of a DC area car, where Zack described the events as “a revolutionary moment”. The interview was conducted between 4–5 PM, while the building was still occupied by insurrectionists.
There’s another group involved in all this: Zack thanks an organization called the Institute for Good Governance for partnering with their voter fraud investigation. Virginia corporate records show the group is registered to a woman named Michele Roosevelt Edwards. Edwards runs another firm called USAerospace Partners. And it turns out the letter forwarded by Mark Meadows to the DOJ encouraging the investigation of ItalyGate was written by a Carlo Gorio, who claimed to be an employee of USAerospace Partners.
Taken together, it sure looks like Nations in Action and the Institute for Good Governance were the source of the ItalyGate story, making this just the latest example of Hans von Spakovksy pushing bogus voter fraud claims. Although Spakovksy now asserts that he resigned from the group two days after the insurrection and nothing to do with its claims. We’re presumably expected to believe that:
“What came to be called ItalyGate blew up online in December 2020, weeks after Biden had been declared the winner but as Trump was continuing to contest the results. It quickly metastasized. By early January, a former Air Force lieutenant general-turned-Fox News analyst-turned-Trump campaign adviser was repeating the allegations.”
As 2020 was coming to a close, ItalyGate became a thing. Talk of vote-switching plots emanating from Italy were suddenly making their way into mainstream outlets like Fox News. And we’re now getting a much better idea of where this came from and how it made its way into the DOJ: Maria Zack was one of the first people reportedly pushing the idea. Her group, of Nations in Action, was incorporated by key conservative political dark money law firm Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky. Started in 2017, the group has had Hans Spakovksy sitting on its board from the very beginning. So while we don’t know who exactly is financing this group, we can be pretty confident that Nations in Action is working on behalf of the anonymous right-wing oligarchs who are funding it:
And while Zack denies her group wrote the letter that Meadows passed on the DOJ pushing ItalyGate, she does claim to have told Trump personally about ItalyGate just days before Meadows passed that note:
And Zack was clearly quite supportive of the insurrection while it was happening. She was literally giving a live interview in support of it:
So who wrote the ItalyGate memorandum that Meadows passed along to the DOJ? Zack’s group issued a Jan 6 press release that gives us a clue: the group thanks the Institute for Good Governance for partnering on its investigation. Institute for Good Governance is registered to Michele Roosevelt Edwards, who runs USAerospace Partners. And it just so happens that an employee for USAerospace Partners is the person who wrote that letter:
So the Nations in Action chair tells Trump personally about ItalyGate on Christmas eve and days later Meadows forwards a letter to the DOJ written by an employee of USAerospace Partners. The dots kind of connect themselves at this point.
And note how Spakovksy is backing away from culpability in pushing the ItalyGate story by pointing out that he resigned from the group two days after the insurrection. As if that’s an alibi:
But it’s exactly the kind of denial we should expect from Spakovksy and all of the other people involved with this operation. Because as Spakovksy’s personal career should make clear, the people financing the work of figures like Spakovksy don’t want to be known. He’s built a career shilling for the billionaires intent on dismantling and capturing democracy, which is the kind of career that involves a lot of secret meetings, hidden goals, and obscured relationships. And few goals call for more secrecy than the fomenting of an insurrection fueled by a big lie of your own creation.
He did it! Steve Bannon went to jail over his refusal to submit to a congressional subpoena. Kidding. Actually, he just went to court then he was released pre-trial and will not be detained after surrendering his passport. Whether or not he ultimately goes to prison will be a significant story to watch going forward given the profound role Bannon is openly playing in organizing the upcoming 2024 planned insurrection/coup/whatever scheme. A scheme that appears to include a national intimidation campaign targeting election workers for the purpose of planting an army of thousands Bannon followers in all levels of state and local election operations.
And yet, as we’ve seen, Steve Bannon is really just one player in a much broader movement that truly has capture the hearts and minds of conservative America. A movement focused on the idea that elections can’t be trusted because they are being systematically rigged by a liberal globalist socialist Marxist Satanic cabal. The same liberal globalist socialist Marxist Satanic cabal that’s, you know, running the entire world. This moment is the last stand against that cabal and this last stand will not happen at the ballot box because the cabal has already corrupted all the ballot boxes. And yet the stand must happen. Steve Bannon has been a vocal champion of that general ‘Q’-ish meme animating the modern GOP, but he’s really just one component of that. If Bannon was hit by bus tomorrow it’s not like the GOP push to subvert elections in the US would suddenly end. Same with Trump, who will likely be long outlived by the ‘stop the steal’ movement.
The movement to undermine the public’s belief in the ability of elections to be administered fairly in the US is now bigger than any one person. The whole conservative movement has embraced this idea, creating a condition that constitution law professor Ned Foley describes as unique in American history. Unique, but with a number of parallels to the ‘red scare’ of the 1950s whipped up by Joe McCarthy. As Foley puts it, “What’s unique about Trump and about what he’s trying to do in 2024 is that he’s applying McCarthy-like tactics to voting, and that’s never happened before.” A McCarthyite fervor applied to the very idea that elections can be conducted fairly. This is new in the United States.
But, again, it’s not just Trump. It’s the whole enterprise. From figures like Trump and Bannon, to Republican congressional leaders like Kevin McCarthy or the conservative members of the Supreme Court. Across institutions we’re seeing signs of an eager willingness to play along with this electoral McCarthyism. And as the article reminds us, Kevin McCarthy is extremely well-positioned to become the Speaker of the House following the 2022 thanks to gerrymandering, almost guaranteeing a constitutional crisis in the 2024 election that could end up getting tossed to the Supreme Court. It grimly points to how bad the situation truly is for the US democracy: The contemporary McCarthyism strangling the US democracy has such a strong grip on power that it’s almost guaranteed a guy named McCarthy is going to end up becoming Speaker of the House in 2022 based largely on GOP electoral cheating via gerrymandering and trigger a 2024 consitutional crisis. All of that is more or less baked into the electoral cake at this point. When will the post-shame GOP finally experience its “Have you no shame?” moment and step back from the brink? It’s increasingly becoming the question at the center of the US democracy. And there’s not reason to assume the US will still be a democracy when we finally get our answer:
“Ned Foley, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University, said the current moment is “unique in American history”. He called it “electoral McCarthyism”.”
A new form of peril unique in American history: the active propaganda campaign design to demonize not just one’s political opponents but demonize the entire democratic franchise as having been poisoned by these diabolical enemies from within. Electoral McCarthyism. The US has experience McCarthyism before, and it’s no stranger to elections that don’t actually follow democratic principles. But this particular form of attack on the US’s democratic institution is new. New in part because of the breadth of the attack. From right-wing media, to mainstream conservative think-tanks and mega-donors, the entire US conservative movement is largely on board with the project. With no real opposition. Mitch McConnell himself warned of exactly of this kind of democratic nightmare scenario emerging back in January as the Capitol insurrection was getting underway. 11 months later, the scenario he warned about is the animating issue driving the GOP. An issue built on a bed of lies almost all of the major proponents recognize as lies but feel no moral compulsion to contest. That’s part of what’s so McCarthyist about this situation: the vast array of actors from across different levels of power and society know they are engaged in wild fantasy but continue down this path because that’s how profoundly corrupted the movement truly is. A ‘red scare’ designed to break the required social consensus necessary for democracy to function is fully underway with the eager and enthusiastic support of the vast majority of contemporary conservative voices and officials. It’s not a movement capture by Donald Trump. It’s a movement captured by the corrupt ghost of Joe McCarthy. The fact that Donald Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, was Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel during the Red Scare is historic icing the cake:
And a core part of this McCarthyist plot involves Steve Bannon raising an army of acolytes who will flood the US election systems with corrupted election workers ideologically committed to this project. Some of these acolytes might share in Bannon’s cynicism and recognize they’re operating on a bed of lies. Others might be true believer suckers. Either way, the result is a fundamental corruption of the ability of the US democracy to function at a basic level. Mission accomplished:
Finally, it’s worth noting the other looming threat of ‘McCarthyism’ here: the reality that Kevin McCarthy is almost certainly guaranteed to become Speaker of the House following the 2022 mid-terms elections — the first round of elections that will be subject to the newly hyper-gerrymandered congressional districts — thus ensuring the 2024 election will become a constitutional crisis should the Democrat end up winning. And who will decide the outcome of that crisis? Likely the corrupted far right Supreme Court. A Supreme Court that’s been so thoroughly rigged through Republican cheating that justices have taken the unusual step of publicly coming out and explaining that they aren’t just a bunch of partisan hacks. Which, of course, were utterly disingenuous bad faith statements made from people who are unambiguous partisan hacks:
It’s that full spectrum of institutional bad faith that makes this period of electoral McCarthyism so dire. The spirit of American’s conservative movement really has been overtaken with some sort of foul bad faith core that is driving the fully array of its leading actors across society. Highly organized full spectrum institutional bad faith carried out by a party that consciously knows it crossed a profound moral line and can’t stop itself from continuing down that path. A post-shame GOP.
Is Kevin McCarthy more or less a lock on becoming the ‘ultimate McCarthyite’ politician in 2023? A McCarthy fueled by the spirit of Joe McCarthy? Probably, but it’s worth recalling that Trump himself can be made Speaker of the House in 2023 even if he’s not a member of congress. So if the GOP does retake control of the House that’s going to be a real option. A real option that the most ‘MAGA’ members of the House are reportedly already seriously looking into. So, no, Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have a lock on that speakership position in 2023. Although the broader movement both McCarthy and Trump are members of dedicated to destroying faith in the very ability of democracy to function does indeed have a lock on that spot. And not a hint of shame or decency to hold it back this time around.