Fox stars KNEW Trump’s “election fraud” claims were false; they even told each other the claims were bullshit
Source: New York Times
The comments, by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems.
Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.
The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.
Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/business/media/fox-dominion-lawsuit.html
FINALLY: Multiple nooses are tightening around Trump and he cannot skate away from them
GA grand jury says some witnesses lied
A Georgia judge released parts of a report produced by an Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia — though the panel’s recommendations on potential charges remain secret.
The five-page excerpt made public on Thursday revealed that a majority of the grand jury concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony before the panel and recommended that charges be filed. The grand jury did not identify those witnesses in the unsealed excerpt.
“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report reads. “The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
The unsealed document offered no major clues about the grand jury’s other findings — though the panel pointedly noted that it unanimously agreed that Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote had not been marred by “widespread fraud” as has been claimed by Trump and his allies.
GA Grand Jury provides plenty evidence of Trump’s criminal activity
The special grand jury report issued in Georgia contains some “very bad news” for Donald Trump, according to legal experts.
The nine-page report contains only two new findings, showing the special grand jury concluded there was no widespread election fraud in the state and that at least one witness should be indicted for perjury, which will then be up to Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis to decide.
“We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” the report found.
Willis had asked a court to block much of the full report from release while she decided on charges, so only portions were issued Thursday to the public, but those findings were enough for legal experts to declare the former president was in trouble.
IN OTHER NEWS: Proud Boys say they’ll ask feds for help subpoenaing Trump for their trial
“The GA special grand jury excerpts are starting to emerge & they are very bad for Trump,” said attorney Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. “’We find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election.’ If that’s true, then Trump likely committed crimes.”
He later concluded, “The GA special grand jury has spoken–that means Trump committed crimes He’s gonna get indicted.”
“This is me reading into it, but it’s perfectly clear they recommended more than one indictment,” agreed legal analyst Luppe B. Luppen, who goes by “SouthPaw.”
National security analyst Marcy Wheeler took a different approach, citing the lack of fraud in Georgia and commenting, “Donald Trump loses GA for a Sixth time!!!”
Los Angeles Times legal analyst Harry Litman summed the report up in one tweet: “Basically, we sat, we discussed, we voted on charges. And yes, some people committed perjury, and we agreed that there was no fraud in the election.”
Lawyer Allison Gill pointed out the piece of the report noting one piece not previously known is “that they recommend indictments for the unnamed people who lied under oath.” The report cites at least one person who lied, under oath but didn’t give any details about how many people.
The new grand jury begins next month. The “special” grand jury doesn’t have the power to indict, only a regular grand jury can do that. This one, however, will likely be impaneled for a lot less time than the previous one given the legwork is mostly complete.
Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann pointed out that the lack of fraud in Georgia is “not a good omen for Trump & co; the next shoe to drop will be Willis’s.”
Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal joked, “Or, as Bill Barr would summarize the report, ‘The report concludes no crimes were committed whatsoever.’” It’s a reference to the former attorney general asserting himself prior to the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report which ultimately cited 10 cases of obstructions of justice by the former president. Using Barr’s rewriting of the facts, Trump declared himself “exonerated” when he wasn’t.
What is hidden in the GA grand jury report is what’s important
The special grand jury report may not have offered any bombshell evidence against Donald Trump and his allies, but a legal expert explained that it showed just enough to suggest trouble on the horizon.
The Fulton County special grand jury issued a nine-page report the concluded there had been no widespread election fraud in Georgia’s presidential election in 2020, and they believed at least one of the witnesses who testified before them should be indicted for perjury, and MSNBC legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg said district attorney Fani Willis might have all she needs to press charges.
“I just wanted to remind viewers of one important thing that’s missing from the report, and that’s the record of all of the witnesses who went in front of that special grand jury and under oath testified,” Rosenberg said. “So there’s no mention of what they said in the report, there’s no compendium of the evidence that they gave.
“But all of that evidence is in the possession of the district attorney. She knows what everyone said, she knows what they said under oath [and] she can use that evidence to build her case.”
IN OTHER NEWS: ‘Trump lost Georgia for a sixth time’: Analysts predict Trump indictment after Fulton County report drops
“So I don’t want people to think that the special grand jury simply met and wrote a nine-page heavily redacted report,” he added. “Rather, they met for months, they heard from scores of witnesses, and everything those people said in the grand jury under oath is evidence of the underlying case and can be used by the district attorney, so the report is somewhat interesting.”
“It’s not all that revelatory, but all that work that the special grand jury did is all available to the district attorney and will inform her prosecutive decision and inform, if there are trials down the road, what evidence jurors at those trials hear.”
Trump’s PAC finances will sink him
The FBI wants to know how Donald Trump spent the money his “Save America” PAC raised on his false claims of mass voter fraud, the Daily Beast reports.
The Save America PAC was created after the 2020 election and was set up as a “leadership PAC,” which allows Trump to access the funds even after leaving office.
The organization was investigated by the Jan. 6 committee for possible wire fraud. As the Daily Beast points out, when the committee issued its final report, its “Follow the Money” appendix revealed some questionable vendor relationships.
“A number of former Trump officials appear to have been on the Save America payroll, taking money through shell LLCs. Smith’s investigation, according to reports, appears concerned with whether those payments were legitimate,” the Beast’s report stated.
From the Daily Beast: “For instance, the report noted that from July 2021 to the present, Save America appears to have paid longtime Trump adviser and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino in two ways simultaneously—personally and through an LLC. Scavino, FEC records show, makes about $9,700 a month on the Save America payroll. At the same time, Save America was also making monthly payments of $20,000 to an entity called Hudson Digital LLC, which FEC filings peg to Scavino’s address.”
Speaking to the Daily Beast, Robert Maguire of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said that after looking at the pattern, “you have to wonder whether it’s part of an effort to keep people quiet about what they saw in the Trump administration.”
“If they only paid them directly, you’d see a list of all these people who left the administration suddenly getting these massive monthly paychecks, some of them more than others. But by paying them through these companies, it gives the outward impression that these companies must be doing something,” he said.
This is what you get when you live in a state that allows open carry of firearms by anyone, anywhere, anytime
“Open carry” brings out the stupid people and makes it easy to identify them.
Lauren Boebert required multiple tests and re-tests to pass her GED
After this ignorant tweet, Boebert quickly drew criticism for taking multiple attempts to pass her GED while Maddow got her bachelors from Stanford and doctorate from Oxford. It was Boebert’s clumsy way of harkening back to an age-old argument by Republicans that Democrats are elitists because they support and promote education.
Good news: Nazi puts a gun to his head, scatters his brains all over his barnyard
You probably remember this photograph . . . it’s one of the more iconic of the awful images of the Nazi torch march at Charlottesville VA on August 11, 2017.
On August 12,2017, the man in the center was elated to see himself on the cover of papers across the county.
Today, I am pleased to tell you he is dead.
Teddy Joseph Von Nukem (yes, that’s his real name), one of the most prominent faces lit by the glow of tiki torches in what became the lasting image of the 2017 white supremacist Nazi rally in Charlottesville, killed himself as he was due to face criminal trial last month.
The 35-year-old skipped out on his first day of trial for a drug trafficking charge in Arizona on the morning of Jan. 30, according to court records. At the very moment a federal judge was issuing a warrant for his arrest, Von Nukem was actually still at his home in Missouri, where he had walked out in the snow behind the hay shed and shot himself.
The details were listed in an autopsy report obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast on Tuesday.
“Suicide notes were found at the scene, left for law enforcement and his children, however handwriting was somewhat inconsistent,” the coroner’s report states..
Raving loon Marjorie Taylor Green attacks rail improvements after voting against infrastructure bill
In lockstep with a number of MAGA Republicans complaining that the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio is “proof” that the Biden administration has started a “war against white people,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) took to the airwaves on Tuesday night to help spread the meme.
During an appearance on Fox New’s Tuesday edition of Hannity, Greene claimed that that money targeting rail safety in the U.S. House’s bipartisan infrastructure bill was insufficient. And that’s why she didn’t vote for it.
“We need to make sure that our rails are safe. Democrats passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and only $5 billion went toward rail safety. This is a failure. It would’ve never happened under a Republican-controlled infrastructure bill,” Greene said.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity began the segment by asking, “I don’t hear anything from the New Green Deal climate alarmist cult about what is an environmental disaster by every measure. Why?”
Greene responded by accusing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other Democrats of only giving lip service to derailment-related wildlife deaths, saying, “Train derailment is happening every single day. And now, thousands of people, birds and animals,…they’re all sick and we don’t know the consequences of this horrible accident in East Palestine. But we have people like Ilhan Omar. She wants to crack down on corporate greed when it comes to rails and the privately-owned sections of rails.”
Greene then set her sights on lambasting Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
“But the real problem, Sean, is Pete Buttigieg,” Greene argued. “He’s more interested in equity and inclusion in his hiring practices, and grant-giving schemes.”
Let’s make a few comments and reveal a few facts about this matter.
The infrastructure bill was passed in August 2022. That’s six months ago. If you think you can undertake “dirt-digging” on an major infrastructure project, you really have to learn how things in the real world work. Oh, and Greene voted against it. We remember that. And Georgia, you deserve better.
I noticed that no one mentioned the Trump rollback of train braking safety regulations?
Neither Hannity nor Green has read all 14 pages of the Green New Deal because it has words and not pictures.
I have to admit, Marjorie Taylor Greene has a certain appeal. Watching her is akin to a train derailment or a gruesome injury. It’s horrible to look at, but you just can’t help yourself. I just have to see what she does next. Masked Singer, perhaps?
The “noble lie” is alive and well in “crisis pregnancy centers”
Plato (in The Republic) was the father of the “noble lie,” a tale told to people “for their own good and that of society” even though it was utterly untrue. Almost twenty-five-hundred years later, the noble lie lives on in some Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs).
A clear description of CPCs came from the Neeva.com AI-driven search engine:
“Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are anti-abortion clinics with a hidden agenda and part of an industry built on misleading pregnant people with scare tactics and lies. They are designed to look like real health centers, but their goal is to scare, shame, or pressure people out of getting an abortion and to spread lies about abortion, birth control, and sexual health. CPCs are dangerous, predatory organizations and a risk to public health.”
And they and their affiliated groups are hauling in a boatload of money. Over $4 billion dollars a year according to the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) — much of it government money, millions taken out of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) funds — flows to CPCs. One-fifth of our states, all under Republican control, now directly fund these organizations with taxpayer money.
Just the top ten groups running CPCs across the country raked in, NCRP says, over $2.2 billion last year, although how much of that went specifically to discourage women from getting abortions is uncertain.
Texas gave $200 million in taxpayer dollars to CPCs over the past two years. During his State of the State address last week, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee proposed giving CPCs in his state $100 million.
The noble lie trend is moving fast across Red states nationwide.
A database compiled by Reproaction found over 2600 CPCs across the country, many located next door to abortion clinics or Planned Parenthood clinics, where they attempt to fool and thus intercept women before they can enter the real clinics.
When Olivia Raisner, an investigative reporter with health education nonprofit Mayday, visited a CPC in Indianapolis for an article three months ago in MS Magazine, she noted how the waiting area and exam room were exactly what you’d expect when visiting a high-end doctor’s office.
Her urine test was positive because she’d smuggled in a bottle of a pregnant friend’s urine, so the first noble lie the faux clinician told her was:
“The girls that get abortions do end up with high suicide rates.”
Following that lie, she was told that if she got an abortion she’d experience depression for the rest of her life and that if she later has a child she “won’t be able to fully love him, because I’ll always be reminded that I took away his brother or sister.”
That lie was followed by the serial lies that abortion will scar her Fallopian tubes and that she’d risk bulimia, anorexia, and infertility.
None of those assertions are true.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, did a ten-year, 1000-patient study of women who got abortions and women who’d wanted or tried to get abortions but, for various reasons, were turned away.
It was the first major study of its sort, and was turned into a 2021 book titled The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, A Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having – or Being Denied – an Abortion.
Their findings are sobering. As summarized on the UCSF’s ANSIRI website, women who were unwillingly forced to carry their pregnancies to term were, according to actual science and research:
—“More likely to experience serious complications from the end of pregnancy including eclampsia and death.
—“More likely to stay tethered to abusive partners.
— “More likely to suffer anxiety and loss of self-esteem in the short term after being denied abortion.
— “Less likely to have aspirational life plans for the coming year.
— “More likely to experience poor physical health for years after the pregnancy, including chronic pain and gestational hypertension.”
They also determined that:
“[B]eing denied abortion has serious implications for the children born of unwanted pregnancy, as well as for the existing children in the family.”
And they found, supporting previous research, that women denied abortions were four times more likely to end up in poverty and, on the other hand:
“[W]omen who have an abortion are not more likely than those denied the procedure to have depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation. We find that 95% of women report that having the abortion was the right decision for them over five years after the procedure.” [emphasis added]
Pro-Choice North Carolina compiled a list of the top ten noble lies CPCs in that state had told women who came looking for abortions. They were:
— Lie #1: Abortion causes breast cancer.
— Lie #2: You’ll never have children if you have an abortion.
— Lie #3: Condoms don’t work.
— Lie #4: The abortion pill, or a ‘chemical abortion,’ is dangerous and not medically safe for women.
— Lie #5: Birth control and emergency contraception (i.e., the “morning-after pill” or “Plan B”) cause abortions.
— Lie #6: Abortion causes permanent psychological and mental damage, including “post-abortion syndrome”
— Lie #7: Abortions cost much more than carrying your baby to term.
— Lie #8: Surgical abortion can kill you.
— Lie #9: You have plenty of time to make a decision. One-third of all pregnancies end in miscarriages anyway. (This is intended to push women beyond the legal time limit for abortion.)
— Lie #10: Your baby can already smell and hear you.
CPCs are growing increasingly sophisticated in their targeting of women looking for abortion services. As Kylie Cheung wrote for Jezebel:
“Anti-abortion groups are already taking advantage of digital platforms to spy on people, from funding and partnering with fertility apps that track people’s periods to reportedly using mobile geo-fencing technology to bombard patients at or en route to abortion clinics with targeted, anti-abortion propaganda ads.”
This week the Tech Transparency Project broke the news that Google, in apparent violation of their own policy against deceptive advertising, has been driving ads and links from CPCs to as many as 56% of women searching for abortion facilities near them.
A typical CPC ad, The Guardian reported Tuesday, has the headline “Free Abortion Help – 100% Confidential.”
And it’s apparently not just Google. The investigative reporting website Reveal reported last June:
“Facebook is collecting ultra-sensitive personal data about abortion seekers and enabling anti-abortion organizations to use that data as a tool to target and influence people online, in violation of its own policies and promises.”
Just as alarming, what happens at CPCs doesn’t, it appears, stay at CPCs. Some of the various groups and networks (some are huge) share information among each other and, as Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa notes:
“Because CPCs do not provide medical care, they do not have to adhere to any medical or ethical standards, including HIPAA, the national standard established to protect medical records and other personal health information. That means they are free to say whatever they want without consequence.”
There’s also a widespread concern across the pro-choice movement that as states move to criminalize or put a bounty on the backs of women who travel out-of-state to obtain abortions (Texas was the first), information gathered by CPCs may be handed off or sold to law enforcement or bounty hunters to track down women who, after visiting a CPC, leave the state to get the care they’re seeking.
Even though CPCs aren’t licensed medical facilities, they do often perform procedures like ultrasounds that in many states are unregulated. Kentucky nurse Susan Rames, an actual healthcare professional with 20 years of hospital experience and “motivated by her Christian faith,” volunteered in good faith to work at a CPC in Louisville.
As Louisville’s arts and entertainment newspaper LEO Weekly reported:
“The center was using an expired disinfectant to sanitize an essential piece of equipment for early-pregnancy ultrasounds: the transvaginal probe. And that disinfectant, medical researchers have warned in recent years, doesn’t kill the human papillomavirus, a widespread and potentially deadly sexually transmitted infection responsible for more than 90% of cervical cancers, as well as cancers of the genitals and throat.”
When Rames tried to get the clinic to upgrade to the right disinfectant her efforts were rebuffed: she even bought some of the right stuff on amazon.com and donated it to the CPC. Finally, frustrated, she filed a whistleblower complaint. But because CPCs aren’t regulated in Kentucky, her concerns were ignored by the state.
Pregnancy is the only health condition where noble lies are allowed.
If a healthcare professional — and actual nurses work in some of these CPCs — were to intentionally tell you lies about treating cancer, broken bones, hypertension, diabetes, or any other condition they could end up both on the receiving end of a major civil lawsuit, losing their license, or even in jail.
But because CPCs are largely unregulated and don’t generally offer medical services (even though they pretend to), women who are taken in or even infected with HPV have no recourse.
For the moment, the only defense women have against these noble liars is knowledge of what they are and how they work. Pass it on.
Pence is not man enough to testify before the Jan 6 Special Counsel
Donald Trump was not upset when the mob he sent to the U.S. Capitol chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” Two years later, Pence is set to fight a special counsel’s subpoena to come talk about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Pence will reportedly challenge Special Counsel Jack Smith’s subpoena not on executive privilege claims—though Trump will likely try to assert executive privilege—but on the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which Pence will argue protects him from questioning due to his former role as president of the Senate.
Nimrata Randhawa officially announces she is running for President
Has she presented any proof that she is a U.S. citizen?
