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deleted87051
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Will Trump win again???
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deleted480308
It's not hard to get a govt ID. If you can't navigate that process, frankly you lack the capacity to vote
Now you're being silly, that's not at all what it takes to get an ID
There hasn't been anything here "epic" enough to warrant a thread lock
I'll admit that I think elective abortions should be illegal and should be prosecuted
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Before establishing the intent, do you or do you not concur that these laws, some of which have been struck down by courts, disproportionately affect/disenfranchise minorities?
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deleted480308
and assuming they can prove they are in fact a voting eligible citizen who resides in a particular district....I'm all for them voting.
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deleted480308
disproportionate effect is not a reason for a law to be a bad law nor should one be struck down for that. embezzlement laws disproportionately impact white americans (last time I looked) but that doesn't mean they should get away with it.
Laws should be judged on their merit. If you want to vote, you should have to show you are a voter.
So is that a yes or a no?
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deleted480308
of course (I had thought that was clearly implied in my answer)... lots of laws have disparate impacts on differing demographics, which is not necessarily an indicator of if the law is a good idea or not
I don't envy your role as moderator. I'm sure it is very difficult. I would like to thank you for your time and effort.
I have no way of knowing how many complaints you've received, from how many people, or even the specific nature of the complaints. Therefore, I don't know the extent to which this thread has become a nuisance to you. I apologize if I've contributed to your work load.
I'm not going to lie; there's been rudeness, crudeness, and very heated debates. But as a strong proponent of free speech and as a believer in free will, I ask that you only close this thread if absolutely necessary.
I do not use the "block poster" function. Neve have. Never will. I believe it is more important to hear all sides than it is to hear only what is comfortable. But to those posters who get easily offended, struggle with impulse control, or have simply reached your breaking point, I say this: Please use the "block poster" function, take a hiatus, or make a departure. I would like this thread to stay open. Thank you.
Ok, just wasn’t sure cause it seems like you have trouble actually writing that voter Id laws disproportionately disenfranchise minorities, but good to know you at least accept that fact.
The thing is, judges are quite aware of the fact that a law that affects disparate demographics isn’t necessarily unjust or unconstitutional. However, they are also aware that the south has a long history of minority disenfranchisement using laws which are not-too-distant relatives of the ones that are being passed today. Federal appeals courts have overturned laws like these today because it’s plainly obvious that particular minority dem voting districts are being targeted by gop legislators, and so brazenly and with so much precision that the conclusion that they’re more interested in suppression than justice is inescapable.
You are being entirely intellectually dishonest with yourself if you can read that “The state closed DMV offices in eight of ten counties which had the highest percentage black population, but only three in the ten counties with the lowest black population.” and come to a different conclusion.
Apropos to this thread:
"Day by day, the progressive brain is shrinking like an apple left in the sun. For the Left, there are now only three possible explanations for why things on Earth happen: racism, sexism, or Russia. If a phenomenon cannot be attributed to one of these three things, the Left is baffled - like a dog staring into a mirror." - Tucker Carlson.
"Day by day, the progressive brain is shrinking like an apple left in the sun. For the Left, there are now only three possible explanations for why things on Earth happen: racism, sexism, or Russia. If a phenomenon cannot be attributed to one of these three things, the Left is baffled - like a dog staring into a mirror." - Tucker Carlson.
That's great that SC has that clause and that 500 voters were able to use it that otherwise wouldn't have the chance to vote.
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deleted480308
The alabama ID is free and there is a voter office in literally every county that anyone can go to, it's not hard to vote in alabama
Additionally, you guys keep bringing up that story and trying to portray it like that 8/11 dmv closings were targeted at blacks. You do know that they closed a total of 31 DMVs at that time, leaving 31/67 counties in AL without a DMV. When you show all the facts, it doesn’t sound so targeted to me.
Here’s a map of AL. Red counties were left with no DMV office. And by my in depth analysis, no person is no more than one county away from a county with a DMV. So what’s that, a 30 min bus ride or so?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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deleted480308
the dmv is not the only place to get an ID. You can get one at the voter's office, which is in every county from the info on the state website
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Yes, this reality was pretty widely distributed at the time of this "scandal." Doesn't matter - the networks blast the official narrative for a couple of days, and by then, the damage is done... on to other propaganda.
What if the fetus is deformed or has a trisomy?
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deleted87051
Have you ever taken the bus? A cross county bus ride? 30min bus rides are unicorns unless you’re in NYC or SF.
And that's where we will have to fundamentally disagree since we're completely opposite on the matter. I think elective abortions should be allowed and the government should not get involved in the matters.
Of course. It all depends how far you're going I suppose.
Was this the key point you took from my post though? I was just showing that the story a few people here keep referencing was not nearly as bad as they present it to be. That's all. We can debate traffic patterns of city transportation later perhaps...
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deleted87051
What I got from the post is that you belittle and discard the problems faced by poor people.
Lol. Ok. Cause I posted a county map and the actual total number of dmv closures, as opposed to the half-truth numbers that have been posted previously?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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deleted480308
yes. It's not that hard to get a ride every 2-5 years
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deleted87051
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deleted126335
What would have made it even better is if the state took those 500 and helped them get IDs.
But it mainly shows that getting an ID is not some onerous process if only 500 people in this state can't pull it off.
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deleted50478
I think there are lots of (not racist) groups that help only certain races of people get to the polls. You don’t even need to take a city bus or pay. One was even part of the argument about Georgia above.
To clarify a couple things, the DMV picture only appears to be better after a federal DOJ probe in 2015 essentially forced Alabama to stop being racist
Amid voting rights criticism, Alabama partially backs off controversial plan to close driver license offices
Feds: Alabama to expand driver's license office hours after probe
More importantly, as much as some of you don't want to admit it, the intent behind these laws absolutely is to disenfranchise black people.
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Rebekah Mason suggested closure of DMV offices in majority black counties, report shows
Updated Mar 07, 2019;Posted Apr 08, 2017
By John Sharp | [email protected]
Governor Robert Bentley's former top advisor and secret paramour Rebekah Mason led a politically-motivated effort in 2015 to close 31 driver's license offices in mostly black counties, a move that embarrassed the state and was later reversed.
The decision also led to a federal investigation and drew civil rights protesters such as Jesse Jackson to the state.
Mason's role was highlighted in a 131-page report released Friday by the investigator leading impeachment efforts against Gov. Bentley, a report largely focused on the relationship between Mason and Bentley.
According to that report, which was compiled by lead investigator Jack Sharman, it was Mason who "proposed closing multiple driver's license offices throughout the State" and asked the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to "put together a plan."
According to Sharman's report, former ALEA head Spencer Collier understood Mason's intentions were to have the plan "rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Government Bentley's political allies."
Collier, according to the report, claims he then reported the closure plan to then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's office because he was concerned about a Voting Rights Act violation.
Collier assented to the closure plan, but through the use of an "objective measure based on processed transactions per year to determine which offices to close," the report states.
The closures were estimated to save around $200,000, an extremely small savings in a General Fund that typically has annual shortfalls ranging from $100 million to $200 million.
Bentley, the report claims, approved the closure plan with one exception: He wanted an office in Sen. Gerald Dial's district to be removed.
Dial, a Republican of Lineville, said on Saturday that he was surprised to see his name mentioned in the report, and doesn't recall having any conversations with Bentley's staff in 2015 about DMV offices in his district.
Dial has six counties in his district, and he's unsure which one could've been slated for closure.
"I guess he didn't want me mad at him," Dial said, referring to Bentley. "It was something I was concerned about. I wanted to keep them open, but I don't remember talking to anyone about it."
The closures sparked a federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which determined that the stoppages disproportionately affected black residents. The DOT determined that ALEA's plans were a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The decision was another black eye for Alabama, as national civil rights leaders, such as Jackson, and dozens of black churches and community leaders mounted an opposition against the governor's stance.
Rural Alabama was hit hard by the closures, especially in the Black Belt - the region of Alabama that takes its name first from the color of its rich soil but also from the concentration of African-Americans who live there.
The NAACP, the nation's prominent civil rights organization, initiated the lawsuit which prompted the federal probe.
"We think it was damaging to the African-American community and I think it's hard to quantify the damage," said Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama NAACP State Conference. "It was more political in that it would have disproportionate impact on African-Americans in being able to get the documents required to vote."
Alabama requires photo ID to vote, meaning that a driver's license is a key document which allows residents their place at the polls.
Bentley initially criticized the DOT's role in the investigation, calling it politically motivated. But in a later agreement between state and federal agencies, ALEA agreed to add more hours of services to the Black Belt offices.
Legislation this spring, sponsored by Sen. Hank Sanders of Selma, would require driver's license offices in the state to open at least one day a week. A similar bill, passed by both the Senate and House last year, was not signed into law by Bentley.
The closures occurred at a time when Mason had a growing influence over the governor's office, Sharman's report shows. The report will be presented next week to the Alabama Judiciary Committee, which is charged with moving forward on impeachment hearings.
www.al.com
---------
And that's even before opening up the can of beans about felon disenfranchisement. Alabama has 286,000 otherwise eligible people who can't vote. 144,000 of them are black. That's 15% of the black voting population in that state. . A bill was passed to reefranchise maybe a couple thousand of them but obviously the newfound eligibility is not being heavily publicized. This is the same state where Doug Jones beat a pedophile by 1.7%
Amid voting rights criticism, Alabama partially backs off controversial plan to close driver license offices
Feds: Alabama to expand driver's license office hours after probe
More importantly, as much as some of you don't want to admit it, the intent behind these laws absolutely is to disenfranchise black people.
----------
Rebekah Mason suggested closure of DMV offices in majority black counties, report shows
Updated Mar 07, 2019;Posted Apr 08, 2017
By John Sharp | [email protected]
Governor Robert Bentley's former top advisor and secret paramour Rebekah Mason led a politically-motivated effort in 2015 to close 31 driver's license offices in mostly black counties, a move that embarrassed the state and was later reversed.
The decision also led to a federal investigation and drew civil rights protesters such as Jesse Jackson to the state.
Mason's role was highlighted in a 131-page report released Friday by the investigator leading impeachment efforts against Gov. Bentley, a report largely focused on the relationship between Mason and Bentley.
According to that report, which was compiled by lead investigator Jack Sharman, it was Mason who "proposed closing multiple driver's license offices throughout the State" and asked the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to "put together a plan."
According to Sharman's report, former ALEA head Spencer Collier understood Mason's intentions were to have the plan "rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Government Bentley's political allies."
Collier, according to the report, claims he then reported the closure plan to then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's office because he was concerned about a Voting Rights Act violation.
Collier assented to the closure plan, but through the use of an "objective measure based on processed transactions per year to determine which offices to close," the report states.
The closures were estimated to save around $200,000, an extremely small savings in a General Fund that typically has annual shortfalls ranging from $100 million to $200 million.
Bentley, the report claims, approved the closure plan with one exception: He wanted an office in Sen. Gerald Dial's district to be removed.
Dial, a Republican of Lineville, said on Saturday that he was surprised to see his name mentioned in the report, and doesn't recall having any conversations with Bentley's staff in 2015 about DMV offices in his district.
Dial has six counties in his district, and he's unsure which one could've been slated for closure.
"I guess he didn't want me mad at him," Dial said, referring to Bentley. "It was something I was concerned about. I wanted to keep them open, but I don't remember talking to anyone about it."
The closures sparked a federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which determined that the stoppages disproportionately affected black residents. The DOT determined that ALEA's plans were a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The decision was another black eye for Alabama, as national civil rights leaders, such as Jackson, and dozens of black churches and community leaders mounted an opposition against the governor's stance.
Rural Alabama was hit hard by the closures, especially in the Black Belt - the region of Alabama that takes its name first from the color of its rich soil but also from the concentration of African-Americans who live there.
The NAACP, the nation's prominent civil rights organization, initiated the lawsuit which prompted the federal probe.
"We think it was damaging to the African-American community and I think it's hard to quantify the damage," said Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama NAACP State Conference. "It was more political in that it would have disproportionate impact on African-Americans in being able to get the documents required to vote."
Alabama requires photo ID to vote, meaning that a driver's license is a key document which allows residents their place at the polls.
Bentley initially criticized the DOT's role in the investigation, calling it politically motivated. But in a later agreement between state and federal agencies, ALEA agreed to add more hours of services to the Black Belt offices.
Legislation this spring, sponsored by Sen. Hank Sanders of Selma, would require driver's license offices in the state to open at least one day a week. A similar bill, passed by both the Senate and House last year, was not signed into law by Bentley.
The closures occurred at a time when Mason had a growing influence over the governor's office, Sharman's report shows. The report will be presented next week to the Alabama Judiciary Committee, which is charged with moving forward on impeachment hearings.
Rebekah Mason suggested closure of DMV offices in majority black counties, report shows
Gov. Robert Bentley's former top advisor, Rebekah Mason, led a politically-motivated effort in 2015 to close 31 driver's license offices. The move sparked national outrage by civil rights groups, and a federal investigation that revealed the closures disproportionately affected black residents.
And that's even before opening up the can of beans about felon disenfranchisement. Alabama has 286,000 otherwise eligible people who can't vote. 144,000 of them are black. That's 15% of the black voting population in that state. . A bill was passed to reefranchise maybe a couple thousand of them but obviously the newfound eligibility is not being heavily publicized. This is the same state where Doug Jones beat a pedophile by 1.7%
Last edited:
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To clarify a couple things, the DMV picture only appears to be better after a federal DOJ probe in 2015 essentially forced Alabama to stop being racist
Amid voting rights criticism, Alabama partially backs off controversial plan to close driver license offices
Feds: Alabama to expand driver's license office hours after probe
More importantly, as much as some of you don't want to admit it, the intent behind these laws absolutely is to disenfranchise black people.
----------
Rebekah Mason suggested closure of DMV offices in majority black counties, report shows
Updated Mar 07, 2019;Posted Apr 08, 2017
By John Sharp | [email protected]
Governor Robert Bentley's former top advisor and secret paramour Rebekah Mason led a politically-motivated effort in 2015 to close 31 driver's license offices in mostly black counties, a move that embarrassed the state and was later reversed.
The decision also led to a federal investigation and drew civil rights protesters such as Jesse Jackson to the state.
Mason's role was highlighted in a 131-page report released Friday by the investigator leading impeachment efforts against Gov. Bentley, a report largely focused on the relationship between Mason and Bentley.
According to that report, which was compiled by lead investigator Jack Sharman, it was Mason who "proposed closing multiple driver's license offices throughout the State" and asked the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to "put together a plan."
According to Sharman's report, former ALEA head Spencer Collier understood Mason's intentions were to have the plan "rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Government Bentley's political allies."
Collier, according to the report, claims he then reported the closure plan to then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's office because he was concerned about a Voting Rights Act violation.
Collier assented to the closure plan, but through the use of an "objective measure based on processed transactions per year to determine which offices to close," the report states.
The closures were estimated to save around $200,000, an extremely small savings in a General Fund that typically has annual shortfalls ranging from $100 million to $200 million.
Bentley, the report claims, approved the closure plan with one exception: He wanted an office in Sen. Gerald Dial's district to be removed.
Dial, a Republican of Lineville, said on Saturday that he was surprised to see his name mentioned in the report, and doesn't recall having any conversations with Bentley's staff in 2015 about DMV offices in his district.
Dial has six counties in his district, and he's unsure which one could've been slated for closure.
"I guess he didn't want me mad at him," Dial said, referring to Bentley. "It was something I was concerned about. I wanted to keep them open, but I don't remember talking to anyone about it."
The closures sparked a federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which determined that the stoppages disproportionately affected black residents. The DOT determined that ALEA's plans were a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The decision was another black eye for Alabama, as national civil rights leaders, such as Jackson, and dozens of black churches and community leaders mounted an opposition against the governor's stance.
Rural Alabama was hit hard by the closures, especially in the Black Belt - the region of Alabama that takes its name first from the color of its rich soil but also from the concentration of African-Americans who live there.
The NAACP, the nation's prominent civil rights organization, initiated the lawsuit which prompted the federal probe.
"We think it was damaging to the African-American community and I think it's hard to quantify the damage," said Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama NAACP State Conference. "It was more political in that it would have disproportionate impact on African-Americans in being able to get the documents required to vote."
Alabama requires photo ID to vote, meaning that a driver's license is a key document which allows residents their place at the polls.
Bentley initially criticized the DOT's role in the investigation, calling it politically motivated. But in a later agreement between state and federal agencies, ALEA agreed to add more hours of services to the Black Belt offices.
Legislation this spring, sponsored by Sen. Hank Sanders of Selma, would require driver's license offices in the state to open at least one day a week. A similar bill, passed by both the Senate and House last year, was not signed into law by Bentley.
The closures occurred at a time when Mason had a growing influence over the governor's office, Sharman's report shows. The report will be presented next week to the Alabama Judiciary Committee, which is charged with moving forward on impeachment hearings.
---------Rebekah Mason suggested closure of DMV offices in majority black counties, report shows
Gov. Robert Bentley's former top advisor, Rebekah Mason, led a politically-motivated effort in 2015 to close 31 driver's license offices. The move sparked national outrage by civil rights groups, and a federal investigation that revealed the closures disproportionately affected black residents.
And that's even before opening up the can of beans about felon disenfranchisement. Alabama has 286,000 otherwise eligible people who can't vote. 144,000 of them are black. That's 15% of the black voting population in that state. . This is the same state where Doug Jones beat a pedophile by 1.7%
"Rebekah Mason suggested closure of DMV offices in majority black counties, report shows"
This headline is an example of why people rightly despise the media. The implication is that Mason said or wrote something along the lines of "Let's close offices in majority-black counties", when all the article an point to is, again, the tired argument of disparate impact.
I consider such headlines lies. Media do this all the time, and Trump is right to call them out on it.
Is this how you want laws pertaining to Constitutional rights evaluated? Discriminatory intent and constitutionality of such laws seems much more pertinent than whether X or Y number of people were disenfranchised. Regardless, these laws are a solution in search of a problem
???
Is this how you want laws pertaining to Constitutional rights evaluated? Discriminatory intent and constitutionality of such laws seems much more pertinent than whether X or Y number of people were disenfranchised. Regardless, these laws are a solution in search of a problem
Implying that we're supposed to believe either the media or the govt's "investigative" bodies.
I don't.
Even I don't think the corrupt politicians on the right are stupid enough to literally say "Hey, let's do a crime" or "Hey, let's do something really racist"
You realize that when people are about to do something corrupt or immoral they usually try to obscure or couch their plans in other language, right? Apparently you don't get that because you think Trump literally has to say that words "I'M DOING A CRIME" before he can be found to be doing a crime.
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In 2011, Alabama lawmakers passed a photo ID law, ostensibly to combat voter fraud. But “voter impersonation” at polling places virtually never happens. The truth is that the lawmakers wanted to keep black and Latino voters from the ballot box. We know this because they’ve always been clear about their intentions.
A state senator who had tried for over a decade to get the bill into law, told The Huntsville Times that a photo ID law would undermine Alabama’s “black power structure.” In The Montgomery Advertiser, he said that the absence of an ID law “benefits black elected leaders.”
The bill’s sponsors were even caught on tape devising a plan to depress the turnout of black voters — whom they called “aborigines” and “illiterates” who would ride “H.U.D.-financed buses” to the polls — in the 2010 midterm election by keeping a gambling referendum off the ballot. Gambling is popular among black voters in Alabama, so they thought if it had remained on the ballot, black voters would show up to vote in droves.
Judge: Bingo witnesses aimed to suppress black voter turnout
The judge who presided over Alabama's gambling corruption trial said two of the prosecution's key witnesses demonstrated "a deep-seated racial animus" and a desire to suppress black voter turnout whe…
www.tuscaloosanews.com
Opinion | The Alabama Senate Race May Have Already Been Decided (Published 2017)
Blame the state’s voter suppression campaign.
www.nytimes.com
Yep, and in SC they are not discriminatory and they have passed Constitutional muster.Is this how you want laws pertaining to Constitutional rights evaluated? Discriminatory intent and constitutionality of such laws seems much more pertinent than whether X or Y number of people were disenfranchised. Regardless, these laws are a solution in search of a problem
Does anyone actually believe that if a person wanted to vote, but somehow had trouble getting registered or getting an ID, he couldn't call up his local (or even non-local) Democrat or Republican or whatever party office, ask for help, and have a chauffeured car pick him up about 12 minutes later to walk him through the process? And maybe buy him lunch on the way back?
I mean, this is what volunteers DO for campaigns. The notion that getting a free state issued ID is a barrier to voting, for people who actually want to vote, seems utterly ridiculous to me.
I mean, this is what volunteers DO for campaigns. The notion that getting a free state issued ID is a barrier to voting, for people who actually want to vote, seems utterly ridiculous to me.
I mean, we all knew Devin Nunes was utterly corrupt to the bone after he had to semi-recuse himself from the Russia investigation because he was caught being a little messenger boy puppet for the WH, so I guess it's not surprising that he continues to be part of a conspiracy even as he sits on the committee which is investigating said conspiracy.
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A Mysterious ‘-1’ and Other Call Records Show How Giuliani Pressured Ukraine
House Democrats’ impeachment report showed the president’s personal lawyer executing an irregular foreign policy.
WASHINGTON — In the two days before President Trump forced out the American ambassador to Ukraine in April, his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was on the phone with the White House more than a dozen times.
Phone records cited in the impeachment report released Tuesday by the House Intelligence Committee illustrate the sprawling reach of Mr. Giuliani’s campaign first to remove the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, then to force Ukraine’s new government to announce criminal investigations for Mr. Trump’s political gain.
That effort accelerated through the spring and summer into a full-court press to force Ukraine’s new president to accede to Mr. Trump’s wishes or risk losing $391 million in military assistance desperately needed to hold off Russian-led forces waging a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.
From March 26 to Aug. 8, as he developed an irregular foreign policy channel that eventually sidelined both National Security Council and State Department aides, Mr. Giuliani — who is not a government employee — was in touch with top-ranking officials, the newly revealed call records suggested.
He reached out to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; the national security adviser at the time, John R. Bolton; Representative Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee itself; midlevel White House officials; the Fox News host Sean Hannity; a conservative columnist; an associate who has been charged in a scheme related to Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster; and the owner of a mysterious number, “-1.”
Investigators are trying to determine whether the unidentified phone number belongs to Mr. Trump, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who leads the House Intelligence Committee. If so, the phone calls with Mr. Giuliani could be further evidence of the president’s direct involvement in the Ukraine affair.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/03/us/politics/house-impeachment-report.html
The report gave no indication of what conversations took place or how investigators obtained the telephone records, which were apparently produced in response to subpoenas to AT&T and Verizon. Nonetheless, the timing and volume of the calls buttressed testimony by witnesses who portrayed Mr. Giuliani at the center of a shadow foreign policy that dismayed and baffled many in the administration.
The call records showed “considerable coordination among the parties, including the White House” to falsely portray Ms. Yovanovitch as disloyal to the president and to manipulate administration policy for his personal benefit, Mr. Schiff told reporters.
The report detailed a game of phone tag between the -1 phone number and Mr. Giuliani on Aug. 8. That same week, Mr. Giuliani was vigorously pressing State Department officials to persuade President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into the Biden family and whether Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.
Mr. Giuliani missed calls from -1 on Aug. 8 to two of his cellphones. Mr. Giuliani then called the White House switchboard and the White House Situation Room, before connecting with -1.
Circumstantial evidence shows that some of the -1 calls involved Mr. Trump, Mr. Schiff said, adding that his committee was working “to find out definitively.”
House investigators suspect that the number may belong to Mr. Trump in part because of phone records used as evidence in the criminal case against Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime friend and former campaign adviser who was convicted last month of seven felonies, including lying to Congress. Mr. Stone, who talked directly to Mr. Trump, received a call from a number listed only as -1, the records from his trial show.
The phone records also detail at least half a dozen calls between Mr. Giuliani and a number associated with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. At the president’s request, beginning in early July — if not sooner — that office froze $391 million in military assistance, congressional witnesses testified.
Mr. Giuliani insisted on Tuesday that he had nothing to do with withholding funding for Ukraine, and any conversations he had with the budget office involved other matters. “I never discussed military assistance,” he said. “I am expert on so many things it could have been some very esoteric subject.”
Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine are under intense scrutiny by federal prosecutors as well as congressional investigators. Prosecutors in New York are looking into whether he violated foreign lobbying laws in trying to oust the American ambassador and also scrutinizing any financial dealings he might have pursued with Ukrainian officials. Two of his associates — including one whose records were also in the House report, Lev Parnas — have been indicted on charges of violating campaign finance laws and other infractions.
State Department phone records cited in the House report show Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Pompeo spoke at least twice in late March. In an interview in late November, Mr. Giuliani said he spoke to Mr. Pompeo to give him the results of his Ukraine research, including the role he believes that Ukrainians played trying to disrupt Mr. Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
At the time, Mr. Pompeo was under pressure from both Mr. Giuliani and the White House to remove Ms. Yovanovitch from her post. A month later, she was recalled to Washington, even though multiple high-ranking State Department officials testified that she had done nothing wrong.
The records of Mr. Giuliani’s calls also suggest that Mr. Nunes may have played a bigger role than was previously known in Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to manipulate the administration’s policy toward Ukraine. Mr. Nunes was in contact with both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Parnas, the associate of Mr. Giuliani who helped the former New York mayor come up with negative information to further his strategy on Ukraine.
In a Fox News interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Nunes said that while he did not recall talking with Mr. Parnas, he might well have. “I remember that name now because he has been indicted, he said, adding, “It seems very unlikely that I would be taking calls from random people.”
On April 10, the records show, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Nunes traded short calls before Mr. Giuliani reached Mr. Nunes and the two spoke for about three minutes.
While the subject of their conversation is not known, they were most likely speaking about Ukraine, the report suggested. In the days beforehand, Mr. Giuliani said on Fox News that Ukraine had improperly interfered in the 2016 election and posted on Twitter citing criticism of Ms. Yovanovitch and accusing Ukrainian officials of interfering in American politics.
During the impeachment hearings, Mr. Nunes led the defense of Mr. Trump, repeatedly raising questions about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election and urging an investigation into Hunter Biden, the younger son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, who was hired onto the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Schiff raised questions about Mr. Nunes’s role. “It is, I think, deeply concerning that at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity,” Mr. Schiff said.
Mr. Nunes ignored questions about the call records in the Capitol, and his spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. But Republican leaders backed him on Tuesday. “Devin Nunes has a right to talk to anybody,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top Republican in the House, told reporters.
Mr. Giuliani also spoke with current and former members of Mr. Nunes’s staff, including Kashyap Patel, who left Mr. Nunes’s office in February and joined the National Security Council staff to work on issues involving the United Nations and other international organizations. The two men had a 25-minute call on May 10, according to the records, despite the fact that Mr. Bolton, then the national security adviser, had said that no one in his office should be talking to Mr. Giuliani, according to congressional testimony.
Mr. Patel had no formal responsibility for Ukraine policy, and Fiona Hill, then a senior aide to Mr. Bolton, had raised questions about whether he was straying from his official portfolio. She asked Charles Kupperman, then Mr. Bolton’s top deputy, in late May whether Mr. Patel had assumed a role in Ukraine matters but received no answer, according to the impeachment report.
After The New York Times published an article in October about Ms. Hill’s testimony, Mr. Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against the news organization. In that lawsuit, Mr. Patel denied he “played a role in shadow foreign policy” aimed at pushing Ukraine to pursue investigations sought by Mr. Trump.
A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment when asked about Mr. Giuliani’s phone call with Mr. Patel.
www.nytimes.com
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A Mysterious ‘-1’ and Other Call Records Show How Giuliani Pressured Ukraine
House Democrats’ impeachment report showed the president’s personal lawyer executing an irregular foreign policy.
WASHINGTON — In the two days before President Trump forced out the American ambassador to Ukraine in April, his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was on the phone with the White House more than a dozen times.
Phone records cited in the impeachment report released Tuesday by the House Intelligence Committee illustrate the sprawling reach of Mr. Giuliani’s campaign first to remove the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, then to force Ukraine’s new government to announce criminal investigations for Mr. Trump’s political gain.
That effort accelerated through the spring and summer into a full-court press to force Ukraine’s new president to accede to Mr. Trump’s wishes or risk losing $391 million in military assistance desperately needed to hold off Russian-led forces waging a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.
From March 26 to Aug. 8, as he developed an irregular foreign policy channel that eventually sidelined both National Security Council and State Department aides, Mr. Giuliani — who is not a government employee — was in touch with top-ranking officials, the newly revealed call records suggested.
He reached out to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; the national security adviser at the time, John R. Bolton; Representative Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee itself; midlevel White House officials; the Fox News host Sean Hannity; a conservative columnist; an associate who has been charged in a scheme related to Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster; and the owner of a mysterious number, “-1.”
Investigators are trying to determine whether the unidentified phone number belongs to Mr. Trump, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who leads the House Intelligence Committee. If so, the phone calls with Mr. Giuliani could be further evidence of the president’s direct involvement in the Ukraine affair.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/03/us/politics/house-impeachment-report.html
The report gave no indication of what conversations took place or how investigators obtained the telephone records, which were apparently produced in response to subpoenas to AT&T and Verizon. Nonetheless, the timing and volume of the calls buttressed testimony by witnesses who portrayed Mr. Giuliani at the center of a shadow foreign policy that dismayed and baffled many in the administration.
The call records showed “considerable coordination among the parties, including the White House” to falsely portray Ms. Yovanovitch as disloyal to the president and to manipulate administration policy for his personal benefit, Mr. Schiff told reporters.
The report detailed a game of phone tag between the -1 phone number and Mr. Giuliani on Aug. 8. That same week, Mr. Giuliani was vigorously pressing State Department officials to persuade President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into the Biden family and whether Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.
Mr. Giuliani missed calls from -1 on Aug. 8 to two of his cellphones. Mr. Giuliani then called the White House switchboard and the White House Situation Room, before connecting with -1.
Circumstantial evidence shows that some of the -1 calls involved Mr. Trump, Mr. Schiff said, adding that his committee was working “to find out definitively.”
House investigators suspect that the number may belong to Mr. Trump in part because of phone records used as evidence in the criminal case against Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime friend and former campaign adviser who was convicted last month of seven felonies, including lying to Congress. Mr. Stone, who talked directly to Mr. Trump, received a call from a number listed only as -1, the records from his trial show.
The phone records also detail at least half a dozen calls between Mr. Giuliani and a number associated with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. At the president’s request, beginning in early July — if not sooner — that office froze $391 million in military assistance, congressional witnesses testified.
Mr. Giuliani insisted on Tuesday that he had nothing to do with withholding funding for Ukraine, and any conversations he had with the budget office involved other matters. “I never discussed military assistance,” he said. “I am expert on so many things it could have been some very esoteric subject.”
Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine are under intense scrutiny by federal prosecutors as well as congressional investigators. Prosecutors in New York are looking into whether he violated foreign lobbying laws in trying to oust the American ambassador and also scrutinizing any financial dealings he might have pursued with Ukrainian officials. Two of his associates — including one whose records were also in the House report, Lev Parnas — have been indicted on charges of violating campaign finance laws and other infractions.
State Department phone records cited in the House report show Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Pompeo spoke at least twice in late March. In an interview in late November, Mr. Giuliani said he spoke to Mr. Pompeo to give him the results of his Ukraine research, including the role he believes that Ukrainians played trying to disrupt Mr. Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
At the time, Mr. Pompeo was under pressure from both Mr. Giuliani and the White House to remove Ms. Yovanovitch from her post. A month later, she was recalled to Washington, even though multiple high-ranking State Department officials testified that she had done nothing wrong.
The records of Mr. Giuliani’s calls also suggest that Mr. Nunes may have played a bigger role than was previously known in Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to manipulate the administration’s policy toward Ukraine. Mr. Nunes was in contact with both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Parnas, the associate of Mr. Giuliani who helped the former New York mayor come up with negative information to further his strategy on Ukraine.
In a Fox News interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Nunes said that while he did not recall talking with Mr. Parnas, he might well have. “I remember that name now because he has been indicted, he said, adding, “It seems very unlikely that I would be taking calls from random people.”
On April 10, the records show, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Nunes traded short calls before Mr. Giuliani reached Mr. Nunes and the two spoke for about three minutes.
While the subject of their conversation is not known, they were most likely speaking about Ukraine, the report suggested. In the days beforehand, Mr. Giuliani said on Fox News that Ukraine had improperly interfered in the 2016 election and posted on Twitter citing criticism of Ms. Yovanovitch and accusing Ukrainian officials of interfering in American politics.
During the impeachment hearings, Mr. Nunes led the defense of Mr. Trump, repeatedly raising questions about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election and urging an investigation into Hunter Biden, the younger son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, who was hired onto the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Schiff raised questions about Mr. Nunes’s role. “It is, I think, deeply concerning that at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity,” Mr. Schiff said.
Mr. Nunes ignored questions about the call records in the Capitol, and his spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. But Republican leaders backed him on Tuesday. “Devin Nunes has a right to talk to anybody,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top Republican in the House, told reporters.
Mr. Giuliani also spoke with current and former members of Mr. Nunes’s staff, including Kashyap Patel, who left Mr. Nunes’s office in February and joined the National Security Council staff to work on issues involving the United Nations and other international organizations. The two men had a 25-minute call on May 10, according to the records, despite the fact that Mr. Bolton, then the national security adviser, had said that no one in his office should be talking to Mr. Giuliani, according to congressional testimony.
Mr. Patel had no formal responsibility for Ukraine policy, and Fiona Hill, then a senior aide to Mr. Bolton, had raised questions about whether he was straying from his official portfolio. She asked Charles Kupperman, then Mr. Bolton’s top deputy, in late May whether Mr. Patel had assumed a role in Ukraine matters but received no answer, according to the impeachment report.
After The New York Times published an article in October about Ms. Hill’s testimony, Mr. Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against the news organization. In that lawsuit, Mr. Patel denied he “played a role in shadow foreign policy” aimed at pushing Ukraine to pursue investigations sought by Mr. Trump.
A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment when asked about Mr. Giuliani’s phone call with Mr. Patel.
Devin Nunes to Step Aside From House Investigation on Russia (Published 2017)
Mr. Nunes, the Intelligence Committee chairman, said his decision came after “left-wing activist groups” filed accusations against him with the Office of Congressional Ethics.
www.nytimes.com
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Both sides are claiming the high ground and behaving in a completely partisan fashion. For Republicans it is about “preserving the security of the process” a laudable and defensible goal. For Democrats it is about “insuring the widest possible participation in the voting process” also a laudable and defensible goal. They both are sanctimonious phonies.
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
This is not an issue where you can "both sides" it, and you have to be ignorant of 150 years of US history to state that disenfranchisement is not something to be concerned about. Listen, if there were evidence of widespread voting fraud in the US like there is in many parts of the globe, I would be the first one to join them in strengthening the laws to make sure the voting process is being followed legally and fairly, but currently all the evidence suggests that voter impersonation or dead people voting or illegal immigrants voting is statistically an almost never-event given the hundreds of millions of votes that were legitimately cast.
Ultimately, it is not a coincidence that these laws have primarily been enacted in Republican controlled states with high numbers of minority Democrat voters.
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How would you know if there were widespread voter fraud in an anonymous voting system where no ID is required? Maybe there is widespread voter fraud and we just have no way to detect it.
I have an idea- universal free worker/voter ID. We could solve illegal immigration, voter fraud, and disenfranchisement lickity split!
Is this how you want laws pertaining to Constitutional rights evaluated? Discriminatory intent and constitutionality of such laws seems much more pertinent than whether X or Y number of people were disenfranchised. Regardless, these laws are a solution in search of a problem
“Brian Kemp, the GOP candidate for governor and current secretary of state in Georgia, is being accused of “voter suppression” because of this law. But a “pending” status does not prevent anyone from voting as long as he or she has a government ID that substantially matches the registration application. In any event, every voter can cast a provisional ballot that will be counted once the registration information is verified.
As the secretary of state told radio host Erick Erickson, there are 75,000 pending voters among a record total of 7 million registered in the state. Of these, 9,224 are minors under 18; 2,935 used a fake address; 3,393 are not citizens, and 5,842 were already registered.”
“California was recently forced to admit that it had mistakenly registered almost 25,000 ineligible voters. The state didn’t even realize it was registering noncitizens until a Canadian who is a permanent resident of the U.S. contacted The Los Angeles Times to say he had been improperly registered under the state’s new automatic voter registration system.”
“PILF found that Michigan lacks a system to keep false citizenship claims from being accepted during voter registration. The group’s preliminary study of the Detroit metro area found at least 1,444 non-citizens have been registered to vote in recent years.”
“A 2012 report by the Pew Center on the States found that more than 1.8 million dead people were registered to vote and 2.75 million people were registered in more than one state.
The Pew report found that 24 million registrations were either invalid or inaccurate, making the registration systems vulnerable to fraud.”
Voter Fraud Exists – Even Though Many in the Media Claim It Doesn’t
President Trump warned on Twitter last week that law enforcement would be looking for “voter fraud” in the midterm elections. Many journalists quickly responded – as they always do – by dismissing the very existence of voter fraud. CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted “voter fraud in this country is...
www.heritage.org
Just those silly racist republicans worried about 35 fake voters.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yes, and maybe Santa Claus is actually the one who places presents at the foot of the tree every Christmas.
But seriously, as I posted earlier, you have hundreds of millions of votes cast nationally with with varying levels of voter ID laws on the state level and yet there are only a handful of documented cases of fraud. Is your thesis really that the second the most stringent of laws are overturned that there is some epidemic of voter fraud waiting to happen in the wings?
I am in favor of automatic voter registration when a citizen turns 18 along with an automatically issued free ID.
Yep exactly.
I know US schools are pretty terrible at teaching history but a lot of people here seem to have learned absolutely nothing or think that history has zero implication on what happens today. It’s hard to have a discussion with people who express those sentiments.
I’m certainly not a lawyer but the term "undue burden" comes to mind when thinking about states that make it more difficult to vote. In addition, requiring an ID does not stop people with green cards, visas or no documents from voting if they wanted to as you can get an ID under any of those statuses. So having to show an ID at a polling place does not stop those people from trying to vote if that’s such a huge concern. It could certainly stop people who want to vote from doing so.
Many states have no strict voter ID laws, many states you can mail in your ballot. If only more states could follow those leads to make voting as easy as possible for all who are eligible.
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LOL, even these voter ID law apologists at the Heritage Foundation only have ~1200 cases in their database going back to 1979
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"It’s impossible to deny that individuals are exploiting vulnerabilities in the election process. The Heritage voter fraud database contains 1,217 proven instances of fraud, but that list isn’t comprehensive. "
www.heritage.org
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"It’s impossible to deny that individuals are exploiting vulnerabilities in the election process. The Heritage voter fraud database contains 1,217 proven instances of fraud, but that list isn’t comprehensive. "
More Proof That Voter Fraud Is Real, and Bipartisan
A California jury on Aug. 23 convicted a Mexican citizen of identity theft and voter fraud. Two decades ago, Gustavo Araujo Lerma took on the identity of a deceased U.S. citizen and proceeded to vote illegally in a number of U.S. elections. But Lerma didn’t vote for who you might expect.
www.heritage.org
LOL, even these voter ID law apologists at the Heritage Foundation only have ~1200 cases in their database going back to 1979
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"It’s impossible to deny that individuals are exploiting vulnerabilities in the election process. The Heritage voter fraud database contains 1,217 proven instances of fraud, but that list isn’t comprehensive. "
----More Proof That Voter Fraud Is Real, and Bipartisan
A California jury on Aug. 23 convicted a Mexican citizen of identity theft and voter fraud. Two decades ago, Gustavo Araujo Lerma took on the identity of a deceased U.S. citizen and proceeded to vote illegally in a number of U.S. elections. But Lerma didn’t vote for who you might expect.
And how many PROVEN cases are there of people not being able to vote because ID was required?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
How would that solve illegal immigration?
Do you mean that companies wouldn’t hire workers without an ID? I don’t think that would stop companies from hiring workers, especially since in general those who work in manual labor, caregiving, etc aren’t paid very well.
Heritage Foundation must be wrong about the ~1200..........I think we all know the real number.............
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