Evidence supports the argument that the 2016 election was manipulated. More than 20 GOP Secretaries of State collaborated with key members of the Trump Campaign may have collaborated to deprive millions of minorities of the right to vote. Penalties may include 10 years in prison if charged.
“If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both…”- 18 USC 241
In efforts to secure the White House for Donald Trump, major members of his campaign – including Trump himself – engaged in a coordinated voter suppression campaign the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Civil War.
In doing so these individuals and organizations – which include, Sheldon Adelson, Charles Koch, David Koch, Gregg Phillips, Kris Kobach, SOS for SoS (now disbanded), the Scaife Family foundations, the Immigration Law Reform Institute, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the government officials connected to the Interstate Crosscheck system and Donald Trump – may have triggered numerous violations of Constitutional law that were designed to prevent just such election manipulations and deprivation of rights.
Charges that can be brought against the individuals and organizations involved in these violations fall under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 18 USC 241, and 18 USC 242. The engagement in these criminal violations of the Constitution also threaten to disqualify Trump from becoming president.
“Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both…”- 18 USC 242
“No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse Prohibitions to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of this Act or is otherwise qualified to vote, or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person’s vote” - Voting Rights Act of 1965 Section 11
One of the most blatantly unconstitutional attacks on the rights of minority voters in the United States was the intentional purging of millions of eligible minority voters form the voting record. This purge was spearheaded by the late Richard Mellon Scaife and the Scaife family, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers, Gregg Phillips, Kris Kobach, the Donor’s Trust, the Immigration Law Reform Institute, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), SOS for SoS, and the government officials connected to the Interstate Crosscheck system.
At the center of the push to purge eligible minority voters from the system is Kansas Secretary of State and the Chair of the Kansas Republican Party – Kris Kobach. Greg Pallast, who is a leading reporter on the Crosscheck system writes,
“[Kobach] is best known as the author of Arizona’s ‘Driving While Brown Law,’ which allowed cops to pull over drivers and ask for proof of their legal status. He co-wrote the ultraconservative 2016 RNC party platform, working in a recommendation that Crosscheck be adopted by every state in the Union. He’s also the Trump adviser who came up with a proposal to force Mexico into paying for Trump’s wall.”
The purge began in 2005 when four Secretaries of State, led by Kris Kobach, “signed a Memorandum of Understanding to coordinate their offices’ efforts in several areas of election administration. Crosschecking voter registration data was one of the areas cited.” The first interstate crosscheck was performed in 2006. In the same publication, Kobach also admits to promoting and implementing a number of other illegal voter suppression tactics stating,
“Finally, in 2011 Kansas took the lead as the first state to combine three election-security policies: (1) requiring a government-issued photo ID for voting in person, (2) requiring either a Kansas driver’s license number or photocopy of a current photo ID for applying for a mail-in ballot, and (3) requiring a document proving U.S. citizenship when a person registers to vote for the first time. Consequently, Kansas elections are the most secure in the nation against fraud.”
By that same year, Kobach had secured 27 States, via agreements between Secretaries of State, for the Interstate Crosscheck program.
Arguably illegal, but largely uncontested, the alt-right and the GOP launched a full-scale effort to make sure that enough Secretaries of State would be elected in 2014 to ensure the interstate voting purge system would be functioning for the 2016 election. They also encouraged Secretaries of State to implement other forms of legally questionable voting restrictions such as those enforced by Kobach in Kansas. This 2014 effort was fronted by the PAC SOS for SoS.
The SOS for SoS was launched in 2014 to specifically to support the campaigns of Kris Kobach and other conservative candidates for Secretary of State that would adopt the Interstate Crosscheck system and adopt addition methods of illegal voter suppression.
The organization was founded by Gregg Phillips. Phillips had been tapped by funder Sheldon Adelson in 2012 to head the Winning Our Future PAC for the Newt Gingrich Presidential Campaign. And while Phillips has stated, “We don’t ever talk about any specific donors,” it is reasonable to assume that Adelson funneled money into this voter suppressions strategy through SOS for SoS.
Kobach is also associated with alt-right funders through his work at the Immigration Law Reform Institute and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The Immigration Law Reform Institute (ILRI) is the legal branch of FAIR. Kobach served as counsel for the ILRI and has been described as the “legal arm” of FAIR. The Scaife family is among FAIR’s top donors. FAIR has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s founder, John Tanton, is recognized as being personally and professionally associated with members of the Klu Klux Klan.
Kobach has also received funding through the Donor’s Trust, which is largely supported by the David and Charles Koch. Notably, Kobach received money from the Koch Brothers through the Donor’s Trust for his work on Arizona SB 1070 – a law that has been called “the most racist law in modern American history.”
Backed by the Scaife family, Adelson and the Koch brothers, Kobach was securely positioned to administrate the Interstate Crosscheck System for the 2016 election cycle – and approximately 1.1 million voters were successfully purged from the system before Election Day.
No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.
- Voting Rights Act of 1965 Section 2
The Interstate Crosscheck system targets voters by first and last name. They disregard other important identifiers that can also be used to match voters such as middle name and social security number. According to a report by Greg Palast,
“Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked….Swedlund’s statistical analysis found that African-American, Latino and Asian names predominate, a simple result of the Crosscheck matching process, which spews out little more than a bunch of common names. No surprise: The U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. If your name is Washington, there’s an 89 percent chance you’re African-American. If your last name is Hernandez, there’s a 94 percent chance you’re Hispanic. If your name is Kim, there’s a 95 percent chance you’re Asian.
This inherent bias results in an astonishing one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans and one in nine African-Americans in Crosscheck states landing on the list.”
As a result, in the name of finding a few cases of voter fraud, over a million people were illegally stripped of their Constitutional right to vote in the 2016 election. These voters were overwhelmingly people of color and individuals more likely to have registered as Democrats.
It would be difficult to argue that the outcome of the election was not altered by voter purging in the favor of the candidate supported by Adelson, the Scaife family, the Koch Brothers, Gregg Phillips, Kris Kobach, the Immigration Law Reform Institute, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and the government officials connected to the Interstate Crosscheck system – Donald Trump.
Without voter purging in key states, Donald Trump likely would not have won the 2016 presidential election.
In Arizona, Trump probably would not have been able to secure the state’s 11 electoral votes without purging almost 271,000 voters. The difference between candidates in this state is approximately 85,000. In Michigan, the difference between candidates vying for the state’s 16 electoral votes was well under 11,000 – almost 450,000 voters had been purged. And in North Carolina, Trump won 15 electoral votes by approximately 177,000 votes. Close to 600,000 votes had to be purged from the system to accomplish this.
The voter purges planned and implemented by the alt-right network very likely altered the outcome of the election in favor of the alt-right candidate. The purging of minority voters, though, led this network to potentially be in violation USC 241, USC 242 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Charges for potential violation of these laws can only be brought by United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch. As such, the Strategic Institute for Intersectional Policy is asking for people to call her at the Department of Justice at 202-353-1555 or TTY/ASCII/TDD: 800-877-8339 and leave a message asking her to press charges against the members of the Trump Campaign for voter purging.
Donald Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday to slam a local union boss who had criticized the president-elect's claim to have saved 1,100 jobs at an Indianapolis manufacturing plant.
“Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers,” Trump tweeted. “No wonder companies flee the country!”
The president-elect tweeted shortly after Jones had appeared on CNN's "Out Front" with Erin Burnett, expanding on his comments Tuesday when he said that Trump “lied his a— off” when he announced a deal with Carrier Corp. that resulted in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning company’s decision to keep a number of jobs in Indiana that were going to be relocated to Mexico.
"I think he ought to make sure he gets all the facts straight before he starts talking about what he's done," Jones told Burnett.
Trump had said some 1,100 workers would keep their jobs. The real number is 800.
Jones then responded to the tweet on CNN, saying of Trump: "If he wants to blame me, so be it, but I look at him and how many millions of dollars he spent on his hotels and casinos, trying to keep labor unions out, you know, so, I like my side, trying to work to make people's lives the best they can be," Jones said.
Trump later tweeted that "if United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana.”
“Spend more time working-less time talking. Reduce dues,” he said.
Appearing later on MSNBC, Jones was asked whether he believed workers at Carrier who supported Trump during the presidential campaign may have voted differently in light of the president-elect's Wednesday attack.
“I'm going assume that some of them would have thought twice before they would have voted for Mr. Trump," Jones said. "And probably wouldn't have voted for him."
During the MSNBC interview, Jones also said that after he went public, he received threats from Trump’s supporters. He said the messages included people saying “you better keep an eye on your kids” and “we know what type of car you drive.”
But Jones added that he’s been doing union work for more than 30 years, and during that time he’s received similar types of threats.
“I take that with a grain of salt,” he says. “I’m not concerned about it.”
Leo Gerard, national president of the United Steelworkers Union, for which Jones works, expressed frustration with Trump's reaction.
"I'm terribly disappointed, and I'm also angry," he told Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC. "We've got someone who is just about to become the president of the United States, most important job on the planet, and he is busy tweeting about a local union president who is in fact a hero."
Jones also earned praise from the Indiana branch of the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers, with both groups defended him as a champion of the working class.
"Chuck Jones is a man of integrity who ALWAYS puts the interest of workers first," the Indiana AFL-CIO tweeted late Wednesday. "To say otherwise is not only false, it's infuriating."
"Chuck is a hero not a scapegoat: you, others know about Carrier because of his, members' tireless work since day 1 to save ALL jobs there," the Steelworkers tweeted Wednesday night.
Robert Reich, former labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, made a direct plea on CNN's "AC360" for the president-elect to change his ways.
"Let me just say, with all due respect Mr. Trump, you are president-elect of the United States. You are looking and acting as if you are mean and petty, thin-skinned and vindictive. Stop this,” Reich implored.
When Obama finishes up in Jan. of 2017 we will no longer be the leader of the free world. The election of Trump finished that off. We had a long run at the top but it is over. Angela Merkel now assumes that position.
Merkel, 62, does not have Obama's oratorical flourishes but her voice is increasingly forceful on the world stage.
She put her fluent Russian to good use in mediating in the Ukraine conflict with Putin.
When most European countries were busy shutting their doors to refugees fleeing war in predominantly Muslim countries, Merkel let in nearly 900,000 people last year - a stance that Trump branded "insane".
'Can't do this alone'
Trump, who pledged to deport millions of undocumented migrants from the US, made anti-immigrant policies a key plank of his campaign.
And few expect him to take the lead in countering Putin, given his open praise for the Russian strongman.
If Trump makes good on his promises to rip up deals on free trade, climate change and Iran's nuclear program, as well as reconsider protection for NATO allies that haven't paid their dues, it could spell the end of the United States' post-World War II role as the guarantor of world peace.
Stefani Weiss, an expert on European integration and foreign policies at the Bertelsmann Foundation, said the US had started to retreat as "world police" under Obama and cede more responsibility to Europe.
"This is a trend that will likely prevail and intensify with Trump's presidency," she said.
It remains to be seen how effectively Merkel can push her agenda on the global stage, if Trump, as leader of the world's biggest economy, adopts contrary policies on migration, climate change and sanctions targeting Russia.
Although it has economic weight, Germany's political influence remains limited and it is not even a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
While the US has the military might to lead a multi-nation coalition fighting the Islamic State organisation, Germany has participated on a far smaller scale.
Merkel is probably now the "strongest leader in the liberal world but she can't do this alone", said Daniela Schwarzer, director of the DGAP think-tank.
Fourth term?
Observers say Trump's White House win has made it imperative for her to declare her candidacy for a fourth term in elections next year and offer the West a beacon of stability.
"She has shown that she is very committed to keeping the European Union together... that task is even bigger now than it was before the American election and so I would think that she might feel that the job isn't quite done," said Schwarzer.
Trump's election has also given Merkel a popularity bounce.
Before November, only around two in five (44 percent) Germans wanted Merkel to stay on as anger mounted domestically over her liberal refugee policy.
Surveys over the past week show support at 60 percent.
By Hui Min Neo
Amherst Democratic News
ACVDN
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