Tag: officials

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Kurt Bardella: 2022 Midterms Might Be The Last Free And Fair Elections We Have. WHOA!!

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MSNBC’s Katie Phang show(05/21/22) did a segment on WaPo’s bombshell revelation that Ginni Thomas’ involvement in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results was much more than has been previously reported. The conversation then turned into how ruthlessly Republicans would have dealt with a similarly situated liberal justice. Guest Kurt Bardella slammed the perennial weakness by congressional Democrats, who he said always played defense as opposed to the attack-minded Republicans. Bardella then made a startling assertion, telling host Katie Phang that if the January 6th Select Committee doesn’t go on the offense by making top Trump officials testify in public like Republicans did Hillary Clinton during Benghazi, then “this[2022 midterms]might be the last free and fair elections we have.”

MSNBC host Katie Phang(video at 5:11): “Kurt I saw you tweeting about how you were surprised that Democrats didn’t immediately start investigations into the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic as soon as they got into power. Now we see the January 6th Committee is apparently fine with not even getting him to testify…What will it take for the Dems to go on the offensive?”

Kurt Burdella: “I just think back to the Benghazi Select Committee, when Republicans didn’t blink to bring up Hillary Clinton to testify for more than 11 hours and face that type of grilling. I don’t know how you can have a system that has Secretary Clinton at the time having to do that, but you let Donald Trump, and people like Mike Pence, and Ginni Thomas, and Rudy Giuliani, and Steve Bannon, and Mark Meadows avoid that type of public setting. It’s such a parity and I’m telling you, we’re seeing right now, at this very second, Republicans campaign for the midterms on the idea that they are going to do this to the Biden administration. That they are not going to hesitate to use the reins of power to go after the president’s son…to try to impeach the president, to try to impeach the DHS secretary…Democrats are about to get a lesson on how to wield power, whether they like it or not, if they don’t step up right now because they are the last line of defense of stopping Republicans from hijacking democracy. It’s not about 2024 Katie, it’s about 2022 because I promise you, if Republicans are allowed to regain a congressional majority, they will not certify a Democrat win in 2024…This check and balance that we are about to see with the January 6th Select Committee is perhaps the last guardian of defense that we have of our democracy and our process, and if we don’t get answers from everybody who was involved, especially at the very top, this might be the last free and fair elections we have.”

As outlandish as Kurt Bardella’s assertion sounds, rank and file Democrats know it is absolutely true. A lot of the crazy things we’ve witnessed from Trump Republicans are rooted in their belief that Democrats will never muster enough courage to hold them accountable in any meaningful way–all bark no bite. Let’s hope the January 6th Select Committee breaks this expectation of weakness by Republicans, by holding them accountable through lengthy public testimonies, under oath. If the January 6th Select Committee fails to hold Trump and his top lieutenants accountable, then as Bardella correctly points out, democracy as we know it, will be dead this year, not in 2024, and Dem weakness will be partly to blame. This of course, also apples to President Biden’s Department of Justice.

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Three Trump Campaign Officials Were Directly Involved In Harassment Of An Elderly Georgia Election Worker

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Trumpers Trevian Kutti and Garrison Douglas pressuring election worker Ruby Freeman to confess to a bogus election fraud scheme at a Georgia police station(Jan 4, 2021)

A troubling segment on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show (12/22/21) revealed that three Trump campaign officials were directly involved in the harassment of an elderly Georgia election worker, Ruby Freeman, who they tried to extort into confessing to a bogus election fraud claim pushed by then President Trump. The officials in question are Harrison Floyd, a Black Voices for Trump Executive Director, who until November 2020, was a paid Trump campaign staffer, Trevian Kutti, a publicist for Trump’s Rapper buddy Kanye West(now Ye), and Garrison Douglas, another Black Voices for Trump member who apparently, was also working for the Georgia Republican Party at the time of this harassment scheme.

Trevian Kutti is the woman in the dark outfit, seen in the video pressuring election worker Ruby Freeman to confess in 48 hours, if she wants to avoid getting arrested, and as a condition for her getting “protection”. The man sitting on the right of Trevian Kutti as she issues her threats, is Garrison Douglas, who at the time, was working for the Georgia Republican Party, and is also a member of the Black Voices For Trump. The “high-profile individual” who Trevian Kutti got on the phone with, who was supposedly going to “protect” Ruby Freeman, and keep her out of jail if she confessed in 48 hours, is Harrison Floyd, the Executive Director of Black Voices for Trump. Harrison Floyd was until November 2020, a paid Trump campaign staffer. There’s no question that this shameful harassment scheme was a full blown Trump operation geared towards stopping the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, scheduled for January 6th.

The full Maddow segment is available here but the relevant clip is below

Maddow said: “Just step back here for a moment, just appreciate what we now know happened here. This is in the midst of what at this point, is already a weeks-long pressure campaign by President Trump and his allies in Georgia. Everybody from President Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and everybody on down, is hyping this wackadoodle conspiracy theory about a random Atlanta election worker, and her being like the mastermind of the crime. They are doing that in order to justify getting Republican officials in Georgia to overturn the election results and say that Trump won. That election worker is getting threatened like you cannot believe. She is in fear for her life under an onslaught of harassment and threats, and in the midst of that, three people involved with the Trump campaign, one of whom until recently had been a high profile Trump campaign employee, another who works for the Republican Party, they arrange to show up at this woman’s house and try to get her to admit to election fraud because then they can protect her. And the deadline they gave her was very specific–48 hours….Why was it so important that they get to her before that 48 hours was up? Well, at the end of that 48 hours, remember that conversation happened on January 4th, 48 hours after that was the certification of Joe Biden’s win in Congress, the thing Trump and his allies were trying to stop at all costs.”

Maddow went on to add that on January 6th, as the insurrection was playing out in real time, a bunch of Trumpers surrounded Ruby Freeman’s house in Atlanta, and shouted at her through a bullhorn. Any reasonable person presented with Maddow’s account of this incident would conclude that Ruby Freeman’s harassers were not just some random Trump supporters arbitrarily going out of their way to inflict pain on her, but rather that they were part of an elaborate scheme to force a bogus confession out of her, which they could then use to overturn the Georgia election results, and stop the scheduled January 6th certification in Congress. Simply put, these were conspirators to a crime.

Bottom line folks, the January 6th Committee definitely needs to look into who was giving orders to these three Trumpers in this very elaborate scheme to (1) overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results and (2) to put a stop to the scheduled January 6th Congressional certification of Biden’s electoral college win. The public deserves to know who else was working with these three shady characters, as they terrorized an innocent, and elderly election worker. That’s the least the January 6th Committee can do for poor Ruby Freeman’s tormented family.

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Meeting Between Biden Admin Officials And Saudi Prince At Center Of Khashoggi Murder Raises Eyebrows

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Khalid bin Salman with Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan

Senior Biden administration officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, reportedly met with Saudi’s Prince Khalid bin Salman, who is the brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman(MBS), and former Ambassador to the United States. Prince Khalid’s high level welcome to the United States has naturally shocked and angered human rights activists because our very own CIA pinpointed him as one of the masterminds behind the killing of former Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Specifically, the CIA said that it was Prince Khalid who lured Khashoggi into the Istanbul consulate where he was later killed.

Washington Post Columnist and CNN Political Analyst Josh Rogin told New Day host John Berman:“The Biden administration is trying to have it’s cake and eat it too. They want to say that they are being tough on Saudi Arabia for it’s atrocious and worsening human rights record, at the same time they want to do business with Saudi Arabia on areas of mutual interest, and I get that. But the way that they decided to do that was by welcoming back the former Ambassador, Khalid bin Salman, the brother of Mohammed bin Salman[MBS], the guy who the CIA asserts was responsible for the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. And the allegation by the U.S. intelligence services, is that his brother Khalid lured him into the Istanbul consulate where he was later murdered…..So it seems like a weird thing to invite the guy who was connected to the murder back to have a bunch of pictures and give him the red carpet treatment, and let him meet with Defense Secretary and the National Security Adviser. It sends the signal to the Saudis, and to the region, and to the human rights community frankly, that the Biden administration’s protestations against Saudi atrocities are just that, just words, and not actions. It signals a return to business as usual….It also insults the legacy of Jamal Khashoggi, and reneges on Biden’s promise to deliver justice to Jamal and his family.”

Bottom line folks, for a Biden administration that is usually very fine-tuned and on-message, one has to admit that granting Prince Khalid a high profile welcome despite the CIA’s findings on Khashoggi’s murder, was quite an uncharacteristic blunder by the administration. More importantly, this blunder unnecessarily dings the Biden administration’s stance and messaging on human rights. Surely somebody at Biden’s White House should have foreseen and prevented this “unforced error” of immense magnitude.

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