#Georgia election investigation

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A Georgia grand jury concluded that one or more witnesses in a probe into possible election meddling by former President Donald Trump may have lied under oath, and recommended a prosecutor pursue criminal indictments in those cases. The special grand jury also found no significant fraud in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election won by President Joe Biden, according to portions of the final report on its monthslong investigation unsealed Thursday.

But the panel’s conclusions on whether Trump, his lawyers and political allies committed crimes while pressuring state officials to overturn the election in his favor by making false claims of election fraud were not released Thursday.

Among other actions, the grand jury that was impaneled in May was known to be eyeing a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call by Trump, in which he urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes for him. That number of votes would have given Trump enough to win the state and its 16 Electoral College votes. Raffensperger refused to comply with Trump’s request.

The sealed sections of the report are expected to become public at some future date. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will determine whether to charge Trump or anyone else in the case.

In the unsealed sections, the grand jury said it received evidence involving more than 75 witnesses, most of which was delivered in person and under oath. The report noted that the panel’s extensive witness list included poll workers, investigators, technical experts and state officials, as well as “persons still claiming that such fraud took place.”

“A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report said. “The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”

The grand jury voted unanimously in concluding that “no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” according to the report.

The grand jury had 23 members and three alternates.

An attorney for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the unsealed excerpts of the report. A spokeswoman for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign posted a lengthy Twitter thread later Thursday criticizing the grand jury for apparently rejecting a variety of dubious fraud claims in Georgia’s election.

Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney on Monday approved the disclosure of three portions of the final report because they do not identify any witnesses. But he decided that disclosure of the entire report “at this time is not proper,” citing due process concerns.

Georgia was one of several key swing states that gave the Democratic nominee Biden his margin of victory in the Electoral College over the Republican Trump.

Trump after Election Day falsely claimed that he had won the popular election both nationally and in the swing states, arguing that he was denied victory in the Electoral College because of widespread popular ballot fraud. Trump said the election had been “rigged” against him, citing a plethora of unfounded conspiracy theories.

Multiple lawsuits filed in late 2020 by Trump’s campaign seeking to overturn state election results were almost entirely rejected in the courts.

After Raffensperger, who is Georgia’s top election official refused Trump’s request to find him enough votes to reverse his loss, the stage was set for Congress to confirm the results of the Electoral College on Jan. 6, 2021.

But on that day a violent crowd of Trump’s supporters, spurred by his false election claims, invaded the U.S. Capitol, causing lawmakers to flee for safety. Hours later, after the mob left the complex, a joint session of Congress confirmed Biden’s victory in the election.

Trump was impeached in the House on a charge of fomenting the riot, but later was acquitted in the Senate.

Willis, the Fulton County DA, in February 2021 opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s call to Raffensperger.

[sbrown82]

[trendynewsnow]

Investigation into Alleged Election Irregularities in Georgia

Investigation Launched into Alleged Vote-Rigging in Georgia An investigation has been initiated following the recent parliamentary election in Georgia, which has been labeled as illegitimate by both the opposition and the country’s president, as announced by Georgian officials on Wednesday. After the ruling party, Georgian Dream, was declared the winner on Saturday with approximately 54% of the…

[robertreich]

No Labels Isn't What It Claims to Be

The “No Labels” Party is not what it pretends to be. It’s a front group for Donald Trump.

Now I understand, if you’re sick of the two major parties, you might be intrigued by a party that claims to be a “common sense” alternative that finds the middle ground.

But if you or anyone in your life is planning to vote for No Labels — or any third party — in 2024, please watch and share this video first.

Here are three things you need to know.

First, No Labels is a dark money group with secret far-right donors. Investigative reporting has revealed that they include many of the same Republican donors who have pumped huge sums of money into electing candidates like Trump and Ron DeSantis. They also include the rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow, who spent years secretly treating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to a lifestyle of the rich and famous.

If the No Labels Party is backed by Trump donors, in an election where Trump is on the ballot, there’s actually a label we should give to “No Labels.” Clearly, they’re a pro-Trump group.

Second, the premise No Labels is based on — that Donald Trump and President Biden are at equally extreme ends of the political spectrum — is preposterous.

Trump has been impeached twice, found by a jury to have committed sexual assault, is facing 91 criminal charges in four separate cases — two of them in connection with an attempt to effectively end American democracy.

There is no “equally extreme” candidate as Trump!

Finally, the structure of the Electoral College means that as a practical matter, a third party only draws votes away from whichever major party candidate is closest to it. No third party candidate has ever won a presidential election.

And in this particular election, when one of the major parties is putting up a candidate who threatens democracy itself, we cannot take the risk.

Donald Trump has already tried to overturn one election and suggested suspending the Constitution to maintain power. It is no exaggeration to say that if he takes the White House again, there may not ever be another free and fair election.

Democracy won by a whisker in the last presidential election. Just 44,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — less than one tenth of 1 percent of the total votes cast nationwide — were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the Electoral College that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump.

If candidates from No Labels— or any other third party, like the Green Party or the Libertarian Party —  peel off just a fraction of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, while Trump voters stay loyal to him, Trump could win the top five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office. And No Labels’ own polling shows they would do just that!

Let me be absolutely clear. Third-party groups like No Labels are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024, and should be treated as such.

The supposed “centrism” No Labels touts is nonsense. There is no middle ground between democracy and fascism.

Please share this video and spread the word.

[vote-democrat-president-congress]

In Plain Sight, Republicans Are Still Trying to Undermine the Election

Some of the most important and alarming reporting during the 2024 election cycle has centered on what used to be one of the sleepiest and least divisive corners of election administration — the vote certification process. Specifically, the nationwide effort by Republicans to install state election officials who are prepared, if not motivated, to undermine and possibly block the certification of vote totals. If that were to happen in the right counties in the right states, it could tip the outcome of the entire election.

Republicans are not being secretive about this. According to an investigation by Rolling Stone, nearly 70 battleground-state election officials have openly “questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results.”

Certification has long been a routine ministerial task, unencumbered by partisanship, as the investigation points out. Increasingly, though, that’s not the case in the Trump era, now that Republicans have reprogrammed themselves to believe that it is impossible for them to lose any election except by fraud.

The danger comes not only from isolated kooks who get their news from Rudy Giuliani news conferences. Last week in Georgia, the Republican-controlled state election board approved a measure that could unleash local election officials to do their own research and delay certifying vote counts (those that Trump doesn’t win outright, anyway).

Put aside for the moment that this new rule appears to be in conflict with longstanding Georgia law that requires certification in absence of a court challenge. The bigger problem here is in how we choose our president — via the Electoral College — and how much power that winner-take-all system gives a single state to influence the outcome of the entire election.

Americans experienced this firsthand in 2000, when the quirks of Florida’s ballot design allowed George W. Bush to win the whole state — and with it the White House — by a mere 537 votes. In 2016 and 2020, battleground states like Arizona and Georgia were decided by extraordinarily tight margins; as Trump’s threatening phone call to the Georgia secretary of state demonstrated, a swing of just a few thousand votes would have shifted all 16 of the state’s electoral votes from Joe Biden to him.

Thankfully, key election officials that year put their civic obligations above their partisan preferences, ensuring that the vote count in 2020 was reliable. Today, most local election officials and poll workers are still honest, hardworking citizens doing a thankless job. But as political rhetoric becomes more toxic and infused with partisanship, many of those workers are leaving or being driven out, replaced by single-minded people with a partisan agenda instead of a patriotic spirit.

None of this would be an issue under a national popular vote. Biden eked out his 2020 win in the Electoral College, but all together he won seven million more votes than Trump. A few dozen or hundred or even a few thousand well-placed votes would not have made any difference. In 2000, 2016 and 2020, of course, they made all the difference.

Jesse Wegman, NYTimes Editorial Board Member

[justinspoliticalcorner]

A.B. Stoddard at The Bulwark:

1. Trump’s Not Taking the L. . .

The last two weeks—the unveiling of the Harris-Walz ticket, and Kamala Harris’s surge in the polls—feels like some surreal dream state. Everything has changed. Have you noticed Harris has pushed Donald Trump right out of the comfy lead he’s held for an entire year? He’s noticed. From FiveThirtyEight to RealClearPolitics—pick your polling average—they all now show Harris out in front after only two and a half weeks.

Trump is no longer on track to win the election—which he has been for more than six straight months. Instead, the momentum, money, voter registration, volunteering, grassroots organizing, polling, and online engagement all favor the Democrats and it looks now like Trump could easily lose. But that won’t happen, because Trump doesn’t lose. He beat Joe Biden in 2020—remember? So if he’s not the rightful victor on November 5, an entire army of Republicans is ready to block certification of the election at the local level. No need to worry about mayhem on January 6, 2025 when Congress meets in joint session; the election deniers plan to stop a result right away if it looks like Harris is winning. Their goal: Refuse to certify anywhere—even a county that Trump won—and prevent certification in that state, which prevents certification of the presidential election. A Harris victory could become a nightmare.

An investigation by Rolling Stone identified “in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania . . . at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results.” Of those 70, 22 of them already have “refused or delayed certification��� in recent past elections. Nationwide, Republicans have refused to certify results at least 25 times since 2020, in eight states—the most in Georgia.

The article describes social media posts from the zealots who have infiltrated election administration as showing “unapologetic belief in Trump’s election lies, support for political violence, themes of Christian nationalism, and controversial race-based views.” There are more than enough such individuals in these key posts to bring us to a constitutional crisis. “I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in November, Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias told Rolling Stone. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.” Sit with that.

Then there is this. Trump’s self-destructive attacks on Georgia’s popular governor made the headlines from his Atlanta rally last Saturday, but he also singled out for praise three little-known Georgians—Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King—calling them “pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.” Who are Johnston, Jeffares, and King? They are three of the five members of Georgia’s State Election Board. Three days after Trump’s speech, this past Tuesday, those three Republicans approved a new rule requiring a “reasonable inquiry” prior to election certification that—while vague and undefined—could be exploited to delay certification and threaten the statewide election certification deadline of November 22.

The law in Georgia, where Trump and fourteen1 others are charged with plotting to overturn the 2020 election result, requires county election boards to certify results “not later than 5:00 P.M. on the Monday following the date on which such election was held”—so this year, by the evening of November 11. The secretary of state is then to certify the statewide results “not later than 5:00 P.M. on the seventeenth day” after the election, so November 22.

Across the country, the November election results will have to be certified in more than 3,000 counties, and all state results must be final by the time electors meet in each state on December 17. Members of county election boards are not tasked with resolving election issues; certification is mandatory and “ministerial,” not discretionary. Disputes over ballot issues are separate from the certification process—investigated and adjudicated by district attorneys, state election boards, and in court. Election experts say the new rule could disrupt the entire process across the state by allowing local partisans to reject results. And Georgia appears to be at the center of Trump’s plans. Casting doubt on Fulton County, which makes up the bulk of Democratic votes in the state, will help him claim he won the Peach State as the rest of the results come in red.

But even without an explicitly permitted “inquiry” like the new Georgia rule provides, Republicans in other swing states still plan on acting at the county level to slow or stop certification. Because questioning the outcome at the very start of the process will create delay. Any doubt and confusion, and perhaps even violence, makes it easier to miss essential deadlines and can threaten the chance that the rightful winner prevails. Election deniers also hope that sowing chaos might prompt GOP legislatures to intervene—in Georgia, Arizona, or Wisconsin for example—a dangerous scenario I wrote about in April.

[...] It’s crucial that these plans are widely publicized. And they can be. Just like Project 2025, which was virtually unheard of and is now in the forefront of the political debate. Putting a media spotlight on this issue will force Republican officials to address what they are well aware of and are refusing to call out. Yesterday CBS News reported Biden said in his first interview since leaving the presidential race he is “not confident at all” there will be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses. Harris isn’t likely to talk about this in her campaign, so it’s critical that other high-profile surrogates do. President Obama, President Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and others must educate voters about the plot underway to force more public pressure and accountability on the process. Every Republican must be asked about local certification of elections, electors honoring the popular vote of their state, preventing political violence—all of it. Repeatedly. As Elias told an interviewer, there are things we can do, as citizens willing to invest some time, to take action. This isn’t a threat from abroad. This year—and likely for years to come—we will all have to continue to fight against what our fellow Americans are doing to subvert elections. Because without free elections—and facts and truth—we cannot be a free country.

A.B. Stoddard wrote in The Bulwark that Republicans will seek to cause chaos post-election to try to block certification of a potential Kamala Harris win.

[tekkenjournalist]

Update

Former President Donald Trump was arrested at the Fulton County Jail on felony charges in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

They let him out the same day, and told him he was basically free to go and didn't have to stay in jail no more.

In a first for his four indictments this year, Trump had his mug shot taken. It was released shortly after he left the jail, and has since been spread around the world on social media.

Social media allows pictures to spread much faster than if they were in print instead.

Trump used a local bail bondsman in a ballroom in Georgia to post his bond. An independent bonding agent (some sources speculate "Quikrete") confirmed that they were both dressed excellently.

The Fulton County Jail, where Trump was booked, has a history of violence and poor conditions. The Mishima Zaibatsu has already sent scouts to the area to evaluate the violence and see if there are any potential fighters to enter the King of Iron Fist Tournament 8.

District Attorney Fani Willis repeatedly swept the investigation and the racketeering charges against Trump and 18 co-defendants. Many of them, including Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, have already plugged.

A federal judge yesterday denied requests by two defendants — Meadows and Jeffrey Clark — to delay their strings. All defendants face a deadline of noon tomorrow to plug voluntarily before they lose rank points.

[reasonsforhope]

Donald Trump charged in Georgia for efforts to overturn the 2020 election

Link here, because WaPo's security measures stop Tumblr previews. Non-paywall link here.

"Former president Donald Trump and 18 others were criminally charged in Georgia on Monday in connection with efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an indictment made public late Monday night [on August 14, 2023].

Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents.

The Recap

The historic indictment, the fourth to implicate the former president, follows a 2½-year investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D). The probe was launched after audio leaked from a January 2021 phone call during which Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to question the validity of thousands of ballots, especially in the heavily Democratic Atlanta area, and said he wanted to “find” the votes to erase his 2020 loss in the state.

Willis’s investigation quickly expanded to other alleged efforts by Trumpor his supporters, including trying to thwart the electoral college process, harassing election workers, spreading false information about the voting process in Georgia and compromising election equipment in a rural county. Trump has long decried the Georgia investigation as a “political witch hunt,” defending his calls to Raffensperger and others as “perfect.”

The Details

“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” the indictment states.

A total of 41 charges are brought against 19 defendants in the 98-page indictment. Not all face the same counts, but all have been charged with violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Willis said she has given those charged until Aug. 25 to surrender.

Among those charged are Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who served as Trump’s personal attorney after the election; Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; and several Trump advisers, including attorneys John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro...

Prosecutors brought charges around five subject areas: false statements by Trump allies, including Giuliani, to the Georgia legislature; the breach of voting data in Coffee County; calls Trump made to state officials, including Raffensperger, seeking to overturn Biden’s victory; the harassment of election workers; and the creation of a slate of alternate electors to undermine the legitimate vote. Those charged in the case were implicated in certain parts of what prosecutors presented as a larger enterprise to undermine the election."

-via The Washington Post, August 14, 2023

[qqueenofhades]

Having seen what's currently happening in Venezuela, I feel so terrible for everyone to tried to vote Maduro out, and I worry about the US election. Will Trump and the GOP be able to do the same thing??

I agree that what's happening in Venezuela is bad and scary, but it's also not unexpected (unfortunately), and it doesn't correlate to the US election. It is very much a cautionary tale for us, but in the case of what could happen, not what has happened yet (and which we could and MUST still avoid). Here's why I think that.

First, Maduro is the heir of 25+ years of dictatorship (first the Chavez regime and then his), and that political machine has had a full generation to fix/control everything in Venezuela just as they want it. They've collapsed the economy, driven mass emigration/purges/brain drains, installed corrupt systems and destroyed civil society, staffed the government with cronies who will only ever do what Maduro personally says -- etc. In other words, exactly what Trump and the Republicans aspire to do here in America, but with 25 years' head start, so all those fixes are well entrenched. Outside observers were also warning well ahead of the Venezuelan vote that even an overwhelming majority for the opposition candidate might not be enough, because Maduro and co. can just fix the result however they want with imaginary fantasy numbers. (See Putin's "win" in the Russian presidential "election.") Because dictators all draw from the same playbook regardless of their professed ideological temperament, they always use the same tools.

Next, voting in Venezuela is all-electronic, which is obviously the easiest kind of voting to jigger, and which means that whatever the people actually select has little to no relevance to what gets published, recorded, or proclaimed. Now, despite the Republicans' constant screaming about ELECTION FRAUD, the 2020 elections in America were widely hailed as the safest, most accurate, and fraud-free in the nation's history. (For that matter, multiple investigations afterward have re-confirmed this, and the tiny handful of cases of election fraud that were found were committed by, you guessed it, Republicans.) This did not happen because of the Orange Fuhrer and co., who were busy trying to commit election fraud on their own behalves, but because America, however flawed, is still a participatory liberal democracy and citizens have the right to engage and to do so in a meaningful fashion. We had the entire investigation about how Russia meddled with the election in 2016, and changes were made. Cybersecurity experts were brought in; redundancies and failsafes were introduced; etc., and even the Russian campaign focused on psychological influence rather than actually, physically changing already-cast votes, because that is very, very hard to do in America. We are not an all e-voting nation; there are paper trails, hard-copy ballots, hand recounts, poll observers, election lawyers, and multiple other safeguards that exist. The Republicans have been attacking them as hard as they can, but they're still there.

Thirdly, the Evil Orange tried to fix the elections when he was the sitting president (don't forget the infamous "find me 11,780 votes" phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State that got him slapped with felony charges), but he couldn't do it even then. He also tried a coup as the sitting president, with full discretion as to whether, for example, the National Guard should be deployed to the Capitol on January 6, and that didn't succeed. As such, when he's a disgraced jobless felon who is not the commander-in-chief of the American military and holds no official or political role, he's definitely not getting it done now. There were reforms made to the Electoral Count Act to prevent another January 6, Biden and not Trump would be the president at any other attempted attack on the counting of electoral votes, and I can guarantee Biden would not sit around for three hours watching Fox News and cheering the rioters on if such a thing happened again. Trump has been threatening violence again because that's the only move in his playbook, and he wants to intimidate people into voting for him out of fear that he'll attack them if they don't give him what he wants, like any other psychopathic bully. But that does not mean he actually has the tools to successfully carry it off, and honestly, motherfucker? Try it one more fucking time. I double fucking dog dare you. Biden has 6 months left in his term and total immunity, according to your own SCOTUS. So.

Basically, Venezuela has already been a banana republic for 20+ years, the dictator has had a full generation to destroy it/remake it/turn it into his personal fiefdom, he allows elections only because he already knows they won't change anything or actually remove him from power, and that is precisely what Trump wants to do in the US -- but, and this is crucial, has not done yet. Which is why it is so, so important to Orange-Proof America and get rid of him once and for fucking all on November 5th. We can do it. So yes.

[kemetic-dreams]

Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (born Hubert Gerold Brown; October 4, 1943), is an American human rights activist, Muslim cleric, African separatist, and convicted murderer who was the fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. Best known as H. Rap Brown, he served as the Black Panther Party's minister of justice during a short-lived (six months) alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party.

He is perhaps known for his proclamations during that period, such as that "violence is as American as cherry pie", and that "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it down." He is also known for his autobiography, Die Nigger Die! He is currently serving a life sentence for murder following the shooting of two Fulton County, Georgia, sheriff's deputies in 2000.

Brown's activism in the civil rights movement included involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Brown was introduced into SNCC by his older brother Ed. He first visited Cambridge, Maryland with Cleveland Sellers in the summer of 1963, during the period of Gloria Richardson's leadership in the local movement. He witnessed the first riot between whites and blacks in the city over civil rights issues, and was impressed by the local civil rights movement's willingness to use armed self-defense against racial attacks.

Brown later organized for SNCC during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, while transferring to Howard University for his studies. Representing Howard's SNCC chapter, Brown attended a contentious civil rights meeting at the White House with President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Selma crisis of 1965 as Alabama activists attempted to march for voting rights.

Major federal civil rights legislation was passed in 1964 and 1965, including the Voting Rights Act, to establish federal oversight and enforcement of rights. In 1966, Brown organized in Greene County, Alabama to achieve African voter registration and implementation of the recently passed Voting Rights Act.

Elected SNCC chairman in 1967, Brown continued Stokely Carmichael's fiery support for "Black Power" and urban rebellions in the Northern ghettos.

During the summer of 1967, Brown toured the nation, calling for violent resistance to the government, which he called "The Fourth Reich". "Negroes should organize themselves", he told a rally in Washington, D.C., and "carry on guerilla warfare in all the cities." They should, "make the Viet Cong look like Sunday school teachers." He declared, "I say to America, Fuck it! Freedom or death!"

In this period, Cambridge, Maryland had an active civil rights movement, led by Gloria Richardson. In July 1967 Brown spoke in the city, saying "It's time for Cambridge to explode, baby. Black folks built America, and if America don't come around, we're going to burn America down." Gunfire reportedly broke out later, and both Brown and a police officer were wounded. A fire started that night and by the next day, 17 buildings were destroyed by an expanding fire "in a two-block area of Pine Street, the center of African-American commerce, culture and community." Brown was charged with inciting a riot, due to his speech.

Brown was also charged with carrying a gun across state lines. A secret 1967 FBI memo had called for "neutralizing" Brown. He became a target of the agency's COINTELPRO program, which was intended to disrupt and disqualify civil rights leaders. The federal charges against him were never proven.

He was defended in the gun violation case by civil rights advocates Murphy Bell of Baton Rouge, the self-described "radical lawyer" William Kunstler, and Howard Moore Jr., general counsel for SNCC. Feminist attorney Flo Kennedy also assisted Brown and led his defense committee, winning support for him from some chapters of the National Organization for Women.

The Cambridge fire was among incidents investigated by the 1967 Kerner Commission. But their investigative documents were not published with their 1968 report. Historian Dr. Peter Levy studied these papers in researching his book Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland (2003). He argues there was no riot in Cambridge. Brown was documented as completing his speech in Cambridge at 10 pm July 24, then walking a woman home. He was shot by a deputy sheriff allegedly without provocation. Brown was hastily treated for his injuries and secretly taken by supporters out of Cambridge.

Later that night a small fire broke out, but the police chief and fire company did not respond for two hours. In discussing his book, Levy has said that the fire's spread and ultimate destructive cost appeared to be due not to a riot, but to the deliberate inaction of the Cambridge police and fire departments, which had hostile relations with the African community. In a later book, Levy notes that Brice Kinnamon, head of the Cambridge police department, said that the city had no racial problems, and that Brown was the "sole" cause of the disorder, and it was "a well-planned Communist attempt to overthrow the government."

While being held for trial, Brown continued his high-profile activism. He accepted a request from the Student Afro-American Society of Columbia University to help represent and co-organize the April 1968 Columbia protests against university expansion into Harlem park land in order to build a gymnasium.

He also contributed writing from jail to the radical magazine Black Mask, which was edited and published by the New York activist group Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. In his 1968 article titled "H. Rap Brown From Prison: Lasima Tushinde Mbilashika", Brown writes of going on a hunger strike and his willingness to give up his life in order to achieve change.

Brown's trial was originally to take place in Cambridge, but there was a change of venue and the trial was moved to Bel Air, Maryland, to start in March 1970. On March 9, 1970, two SNCC officials, Ralph Featherstone and William ("Che") Payne, died on U.S. Route 1 south of Bel Air, when a bomb on the front floorboard of their car exploded, killing both occupants. The bomb's origin is disputed: some say the bomb was planted in an assassination attempt, and others say Payne was carrying it to the courthouse where Brown was to be tried. The next night, the Cambridge courthouse was bombed

Brown disappeared for 18 months. He was posted on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted List. He was arrested after a reported shootout with officers in New York City following an alleged attempted robbery of a bar there. He was convicted of robbery and served five years (1971–76) in Attica Prison in western New York state. While in prison, Brown converted to Islam. He formally changed his name from Hubert Gerold Brown to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin.

After his release, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he opened a grocery store. He became an imam, a Muslim spiritual leader, in the National Ummah, one of the nation's largest African Muslim groups. He also was a community activist in Atlanta's West End neighborhood. He preached against drugs and gambling. It has since been suggested that al-Amin changed his life again when he became affiliated with the "Dar ul-Islam Movement"

On May 31, 1999, al-Amin was pulled over while driving in Marietta, Georgia by police officer Johnny Mack for a suspected stolen vehicle. During a search, al-Amin was found to have in his pocket a police badge. He also had a bill of sale in his pocket, explaining his possession of the stolen car, and he claimed that he had been issued an honorary police badge by Mayor John Jackson, a statement which Jackson verified. Despite this, al-Amin was charged with speeding, auto theft and impersonating a police officer.

On March 16, 2000, in Fulton County, Georgia, Sheriff's deputies Ricky Kinchen and Aldranon English went to al-Amin's home to execute an arrest warrant for failing to appear in court over the charges. After determining that the home was unoccupied, the deputies drove away and were shortly passed by a black Mercedes headed for the house. Kinchen (the more senior deputy) noted the suspect vehicle, turned the patrol car around, and drove up to the Mercedes, stopping nose to nose. English approached the Mercedes and told the single occupant to show his hands. The occupant opened fire with a .223 rifle. English ran between the two cars while returning fire from his handgun, and was hit four times. Kinchen was shot with the rifle and a 9 mm handgun.

The next day, Kinchen died of his wounds at Grady Memorial Hospital. English survived his wounds. He identified al-Amin as the shooter from six photos he was shown while recovering in the hospital[citation needed] Another source said English identified him shortly before going into surgery for his wounds.

After the shootout, al-Amin fled Atlanta, going to White Hall, Alabama. He was tracked down by U.S. Marshals who started with a blood trail at the shooting site, and arrested by law enforcement officers after a four-day manhunt. Al-Amin was wearing body armor at the time of his arrest. He showed no wounds. Officers found a 9 mm handgun near his arrest site. Firearms identification testing showed that this was used to shoot Kinchen and English, but al-Amin's fingerprints were not found on the weapon. Later, al-Amin's black Mercedes was found with bullet holes in it.

His lawyers argued he was innocent of the shooting. Defense attorneys noted that al-Amin's fingerprints were not found on the murder weapon, and he was not wounded in the shooting, as one of the deputies said the shooter was. A trail of blood found at the scene was tested and did not belong to al-Amin or either of the deputies. A test by the state concluded that it was animal blood, but these results have been disputed because there was no clear chain of custody to verify the sample and testing process. Deputy English had said that the killer's eyes were gray, but al-Amin's are brown.

At al-Amin's trial, prosecutors noted that he had never provided an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the shootout, nor any explanation for fleeing the state afterward. He also did not explain why the weapons used in the shootout were found near him during his arrest.

On March 9, 2002, nearly two years after the shootings, al-Amin was convicted of 13 criminal charges, including Kinchen's murder and aggravated assault in shooting English. Four days later, he was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole (LWOP).He was sent to Georgia State Prison, the state's maximum-security facility near Reidsville, Georgia.

Otis Jackson, a man incarcerated for unrelated charges, claimed that he committed the Fulton County shootings, and confessed this two years before al-Amin was convicted of the same crime. The court did not consider Jackson's statement as evidence. Jackson's statements corroborated details from 911 calls following the shooting, including a bleeding man seen limping from the scene: Jackson said he knocked on doors to solicit a ride while suffering from wounds sustained in the firefight with deputies Kinchen and English. Jackson recanted his statement two days after making it, but later confessed again in a sworn affidavit, stating that he had only recanted after prison guards threatened him for being a "cop killer". Prosecutors refuted Jackson's testimony, claiming he couldn't have shot the deputies as he was wearing an ankle tag for house confinement that would have showed his location. Al-Amin's lawyers allege that the tag was faulty.

Al-Amin appealed his conviction on the basis of a racial conspiracy against him, despite both Fulton County deputies being black. In May 2004, the Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously ruled to uphold al-Amin's conviction.

In August 2007, al-Amin was transferred to federal custody, as Georgia officials decided he was too high-profile for the Georgia prison system to handle. He was first held in a holdover facility in the USP Atlanta; two weeks later he was moved to a federal transfer facility in Oklahoma, pending assignment to a federal penitentiary.

On October 21, 2007, al-Amin was transferred to ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He has been under an unofficial gag order, prevented from having any interviews with writers, journalists or biographers.

On July 18, 2014, having been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, al-Amin was transferred to Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina. As of March 2018, he is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Tucson.

Al-Amin sought retrial through the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Investigative journalist, Hamzah Raza, has written more about Otis Jackson's confession to the deputy shootings in 2000, and said that this evidence should have been considered by the court. It had the potential of exonerating al-Amin. However, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his appeal on July 31, 2019.

In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from al-Amin. His family and supporters continue to petition for a new trial.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

Soon...

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Special counsel Jack Smith has informed former President Donald Trump by letter that he is a target in his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Trump also confirmed the development in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The letter, which sources said was transmitted to Trump's attorneys in recent days, indicates that yet another indictment of the former president could be imminent -- though it is not immediately clear what kind of charges he could ultimately face.

Target letters are typically given to subjects in a criminal investigation to put them on notice that they are facing the prospect of indictment.

Multiple sources tell ABC News that allies, aides and attorneys for the former president have been working to determine if anyone else received a target letter from the special counsel regarding the election probe.

"We can't find anyone," a source said Tuesday afternoon.

An attorney for Trump's former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, told ABC News that the former New York City mayor had not received a letter as of Tuesday afternoon.

Trump previously received a target letter from Smith before he was indicted by a grand jury in Florida for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House and his alleged efforts to obstruct the government's investigation.

Smith took control of the sprawling Justice Department investigation into the failed efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart his election loss upon his appointment as special counsel in November of last year, and in recent months dozens of witnesses have appeared to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.

According to sources, prosecutors have questioned witnesses specifically about the efforts to put forward false slates of so-called false electors that were to have cast electoral college votes during the certification for Trump in key swing states that he lost to President Joe Biden.

Investigators have also sought information on Trump's actions and his state of mind in the days leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, temporarily disrupting the certification and causing lawmakers and former Vice President Pence to flee the building.

Trump was indicted last month on 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after Smith's prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation's defense capabilities. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The former president has also pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment from the Manhattan district attorney charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election.

[kp777]

By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

Sept. 20, 2024

One expert warned that requiring hand-counted ballots "could plunge the vote counting process into chaos and give Republicans yet another pretext not to certify the results" if Vice President Kamala Harris wins Georgia.

Forty-five days before U.S. elections and less than a month before early voting begins, former President Donald Trump's allies on the Georgia State Election Board on Friday passed a rule requiring county officials in the key swing state to count all ballots by hand, a move one expert said could "be exploited by election deniers" like Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee.

The board's pro-Trump majority voted 3-2 in favor of requiring hand counts, with Chair John Fervier, an Independent, casting one of the two dissenting votes.

"The overwhelming number of election officials that have reached out to me have been opposed to this," Fervier said in a statement. "There are several things that concern me about this. No. 1, I do think it's too close to the election. I do. I think that it's too late to train a lot of poll workers that have already started their training processes."

Fervier also said the board overstepped its authority by passing the new rule.

"This board is an administrative body, not a legislative body," he explained. "If the Legislature had wanted this, they would have put it in the statute. This board is not here to make law. We're here to interpret law, and I don't see any place in statute, where [it mentions] hand counting the ballots after they come out of the machines

Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board's lone Democrat, told Mother Jones' Ari Berman that "we're so far off the deep end of sanity here."

"It's a terrible, terrible idea to do this sort of thing with no notice, no training," she added.

Berman warned that the rule change "could plunge the vote counting process into chaos and give Republicans yet another pretext not to certify the results" if Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, wins the state. He added that the new rule could even help Republicans "rig the state for Trump."

Trump, who lost Georgia to President Joe Biden by less than half a percentage point in 2020, infamously asked Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes" in his favor. This prompted Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to launch an investigation that led to 13 criminal counts against Trump and numerous alleged co-conspirators for violations of the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act related to their participation in a sprawling "criminal enterprise" aimed at overturning the election.

In June, the Georgia Court of Appeals paused the case, in which judges have dismissed multiple counts against Trump and his co-defendants, four of whom have pleaded guilty.

Republican Georgia officials including Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr have also voiced concerns about hand counts.

However, Janelle King, a board member who supports Trump, said Friday that "what I don't want to do is set a precedent that we are OK with speed over accuracy."

Voting rights advocates decried the new rule.

"By mandating hand counts that can magnify discrepancies and potentially delay results, the Georgia State Election Board has taken another dangerous step to create doubt in our election process where there should be none," Kristin Nabers, Georgia state director at the advocacy group All Voting Is Local—which warned that the board is "purposely setting up [the] system to fail"—said in a statement Friday.

"Counting thousands of ballots by hand will be an incredibly tedious, expensive, and possibly error-prone process," she continued. "Any human errors can be exploited by election deniers to sow distrust and decrease confidence in our elections and in the hard-working election officials that run them."

"Many election workers have spoken recently about the threats they are facing from the conspiracy theorists who refuse to believe that our elections are fair, and these rules just add fuel to that fire," Nabers related.

"Implementing these drastic changes less than a month before the start of early voting means counties may have to restart their training of poll workers," she added. "These unnecessary hand counts are setting the county election offices up for failure. Today, we witnessed the board allow election deniers to complicate elections in the Peach State even further with their baseless conspiracy theories."

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that "instead of providing better access to the polls, extremists in Georgia are changing the rules just over a month before we elect new leaders."

"This new policy will only create more distrust of our safe and secure election system, burden election workers, and slow the vote count," she added.

It's not just Georgia. As Public Citizen noted Friday, "Since 2020, several states have implemented new voter restrictions to suppress turnout."

"Georgia, Texas, Montana, and Iowa have added new voter-restriction policies such as shortening early voting windows, requiring new voter registration if voters don't participate in the previous election, forbidding automatic mailing absentee ballot applications, and requiring IDs at the polls," the group noted. "States have also purged voter roles and even sued to try to prevent voter registration efforts."

In Georgia, which enacted a Republican-led voter suppression law in 2021, voters experienced a dramatic increase in mail-in ballot rejections during subsequent municipal elections.

As Common Dreams reported at the time, the law imposed strict voter identification requirements, significantly limited the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, eliminated mobile voting vans, and made it a crime to give water to people waiting in line to vote.

[trendynewsnow]

EU Calls for Investigation into Georgian Election Irregularities

EU Urges Investigation into Georgian Election Irregularities The European Union has called upon the Georgian government to conduct a swift, transparent, and independent investigation into the reported irregularities that marred the parliamentary elections held on Saturday. These elections were closely monitored, with the ruling party, Georgian Dream, securing a majority with approximately 54% of…

[mariacallous]

LEHMAN TWP. — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and three nationally known Republicans rallied a receptive crowd Sunday afternoon to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris for president on Nov. 5.

Standing in front of a farm barn under a sign that read “country over party,” former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, and former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said Harris is the best choice to lead the nation, even though she is a Democrat and they are Republicans.

They also said Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump is unfit to serve another term in the White House.

“I don’t stand here as a Republican, I stand here as an American,” said Duncan, who opposed attempts at forming an alternate slate of electors in Georgia for Trump following the 2020 election.

“If you cross a mob boss with a circus clown, you get Donald Trump,” Duncan said. “He’s been a fake Republican.”

Kinzinger, who was serving as a member of Congress in the Capitol when it was overrun by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, said that uprising “was about one man’s pride that could not be wounded.”

“It’s time to turn the page on Donald Trump,” said Kinzinger, who was among 35 House Republicans who voted in favor of creating a commission to investigate the Jan.6 incident.

Whitman said she knew Trump during her tenure as governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001, when Trump owned a casino in Atlantic City. When people point to Trump’s success as a businessman, Whitman said, she points out that multiple businesses he ran failed.

“How does a casino lose money?” she said.

Whitman said she supports Harris in part because of the vice president’s strong support for reproductive rights. She said she wants her grandchildren to have the same right to decide what to do with their bodies that she did.

Shapiro spoke last, joking that he never would have expected to be at a campaign rally with three Republicans shortly before an election.

The governor said he and the three Republican speakers were “standing here together” in unity to support the Harris-Walz ticket.

Shapiro said he has known Harris for 20 years, since he was a state representative and she was district attorney of San Francisco, California.

Harris is “tough as nails, battle-tested” and “ready to lead this nation,” Shapiro said.

He encouraged everyone to get out to vote for Harris, calling Luzerne County a “pivotal county” in the “swingiest of all swing states.”

Pennsylvania was “the birthplace of freedom” when the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia to form the United States as a nation, Shapiro said.

“Let’s make it happen again in the birthplace of democracy,” he said.