It’s that time again for cleaning up the ICYMI News and Updates files. So, without further ado, let’s get this show on the road.
There have been a few updates since we last left off on all the North Carolina District 09 shenanigans. After learning both the state Republican party and the National Republican Congressional Committee had been warned about possible fraud with absentee voting and choosing to ignore it, we also learned that NC Election Officials had been investigating Dowless as early as 2016 and turned evidence over to state prosecutors who failed to act and that as of January 2018, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman in Raleigh has now taken over the case.
Now we learn a few more updates. The public meeting set January 11th to consider evidence to determine if a new election will be called is still on, however, on December 28th, the New York Times reported the turmoil grew deeper as “North Carolina’s state elections board dissolved at noon on Friday under a court order, two weeks before it was to hold a public hearing to consider evidence of the fraud allegations.”
[T]he direction of North Carolina’s investigation into the allegations faced new obstacles on Friday as the elections board dissolved, a court-ordered consequence of a long-running battle over partisan power in North Carolina that was separate from the election fraud investigation. Even with the demise of the board, state officials said the inquiry would continue at the staff level, even if a board was not yet in place to consider evidence and reach conclusions.
New York Times
Meanwhile, Associated Press reported Tuesday new evidence shows that investigations into voter irregularities and fraud have been going on as early as 2010 and one of the primary focuses has been on McCrae Dowless for that long when it was first alleged he was paying people $5 for their votes outside polling stations.
Marshall Tutor, who retired in March after 15 years as an investigator for the N.C. Board of Elections, told The Associated Press his office first fielded accusations nearly a decade ago that Dowless, now 62, was among a group giving voters cash to fill out ballots the way he directed.
Associated Press; Jan 8 2018
On December 21st, the Associated Press also reported they had obtained a letter from the NC Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Strach who had issued an “urgent plea nearly two years ago for the Trump administration to file criminal charges against the man now at the center of ballot fraud allegations that have thrown a 2018 congressional race into turmoil,” warning that if the people involved were not prosecuted they would continue to keep doing it.
Josh Lawson, the top lawyer for the elections board, said Friday that Strach’s memo was followed less than a month later with the first of several in-person meetings during which state investigators provided FBI agents and federal prosecutors with evidence accusing Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. and others of criminal activity.
In an interesting twist, this warning came at a time when Trump still had an acting Attorney General, but when Jeff Sessions came along, his office failed to take action in the matter, but instead decided to focus his efforts with new incoming U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina Robert J. Higdon, Jr., who took over that office in September 2017 making the focus of those efforts over the next year on “prosecuting a handful of non-citizens who had allegedly voted.”
And it just so happens, in case you missed it, you can read all about that one right here at The News Blender in this story: DOJ Throws North Carolina into Chaos, Issues “Sweeping Subpoenas” for Millions of Voter Records to be Turned over to “Immigration”
[On a side note update to that story, turns out that netted them only a handful of cases “against longtime legal permanent residents or those who had been granted citizenship only to have authorities later determine they had been untruthful on their applications. At least four have pleaded guilty, with the only sentence meted out so far going against an Italian man who has lived legally in the United States since 1985. The judge in the case gave him a $200 fine and no prison time.”]
When the AP asked state elections board Chairman Joshua Malcolm his opinion on how US prosecutors handled things he said that election boards have a “very particular role,” that it is the boards role “to investigate matters … and to refer matters to prosecutors and law enforcement officials to carry out their responsibility,” adding, “we don’t control what happens once we make a referral.”
Therefore, as things remain in chaos, as Politio reports, the majority House Democrats will now prepare to hold their own investigations into whether or not NC-09 will hold a new election. Meanwhile, the disputed “winner” of the race Republican Mark Harris, and his disputed 905 votes over Democrat Dan McCready, will not be seated.
Committee to Protect Jounalists (CPJ) in a CPJ special report by Elana Beiser,
For the third year in a row, 251 or more journalists are jailed around the world, suggesting the authoritarian approach to critical news coverage is more than a temporary spike. China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia imprisoned more journalists than last year, and Turkey remained the world’s worst jailer.
Reuters reported two of its journalists have been imprisoned in Myanmar for 388 days.
“Taking money from a convicted pedophile is not a good look.”
From 1990 through 2004, Epstein donated about $145,000 to Democratic candidates for office, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He was also a major contributor to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Epstein was also a long-time member of President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club. The Florida prosecutor who granted him his sweetheart sentencing deal, Alex Acosta, is now Trump’s Secretary of Labor. And one of Epstein’s accusers told the Herald that she had sex with Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s lawyer and a Trump ally, “at least six times” while she was underage. Dershowitz has denied the charges.
Daily Beast
ICYMI, TNB covered the story of the team of Miami Herald journalists who investigated for more than year and a half to take a closer look into the case of notorious serial sexual abuser Jeffery Epstein and a Perversion of Justice.
Before it was all known about the “sweetheart deal” our DOJ law enforcement arm which allowed this pig to barely even have to serve out his sentence under “community control” in Florida we get in my way back machine of reporting file from 2011 and 2015.
Katie Couric, Woody Allen: Jeffrey Epstein’s Society Friends Close Ranks; By Alexandra Wolfe; April 1, 2011; Daily Beast
“A jail sentence doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty.”
I Tried to Warn You About Sleazy Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2003; by Vicky Ward; January 1, 2015; Daily Beast
These next few come from yesterday and were filed in the Oh Snap file, but to leave the rest of the day with a bit of levity, we’ll just dump them today.
Oh snap!
Isn’t it amazing the amount of blind trust people hand out now days in the age of the interwebz? Those Game Wardens take their jobs seriously.
Whatever happened to stranger danger ideas and, really, just going to spill your guts on your illegal behaviors even before the first date?
This next bit of news is of the Oh, snap! No he did not! variety – that is the double Oh snap! file which consists of those rare things you would never think to see, yet unfortunately, here we are.
A family in Salinas, California, had only been using their new Ring security camera for about a month before it captured nightmare fuel—a stranger fellating their doorbell around 5:00 am on Saturday morning.
“I thought, boy there’s a lot of traffic. I go, 5:00 in the morning? My son doesn’t get home till 6:00 a.m. well then who the heck is that?” doorbell licker victim Sylvia Dungan said.
Just seeing this is bad enough, so whatever you do, do NOT watch him for the minute plus video KHOU posted. Some things can not be unseen.
Did you go watch the longer video? You did, didn’t you! I told you!
😆
To help wash that last one out of the mind, if you watch Family Guy, here is one you may not want to miss. And even if you don’t, the clip is still funny.
[h/t to Agent1220 for that RT]
Last, but not least, we get to the part of ancient druids, prophesy and gods…you didn’t forget about that part, did you?
Stay tuned.