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By ‘Protecting Election Workers,’ Democrats Mean Protecting Control Over Election Administration


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | JANUARY 22, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/22/by-protecting-election-workers-democrats-mean-protecting-control-over-election-administration/

Poll worker cleaning a voting booth.

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When regime-approved “journalists” aren’t pretending election illegalities don’t exist, they’re fomenting unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Republican voters.

In the months leading up to and following the 2022 midterms, legacy media have run story after story decrying the avalanche of alleged “threats” levied against election workers by GOP voters, whom they cast as extremists seeking to disrupt “democracy.” Predictions of such widespread interference in the 2022 contests have (unsurprisingly) never materialized and numbers from President Biden’s own Justice Department have undermined such a narrative. But nevertheless, the scaremongering from the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” crowd persists.

This seemingly coordinated effort has prompted Democrats in state legislatures throughout the country to base legislation on such election falsehoods. In Virginia, for example, a Democrat state senator filed a bill this month that would classify threatening an individual because of his roles as a current or former election official as a “hate crime.” The bill could also “result in a net increase in periods of imprisonment” for Virginians charged with crimes related to threatening election officials.

And, of course, the bill is written so loosely that any accusation fits their narrative. MORE SOCIALISM.

Threatening election workers is already explicitly prohibited under both Virginia and federal law. SB 364 is currently awaiting action from the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. Despite Democrats’ insistence, evidence does not support the notion that election workers everywhere are facing constant threats from conservatives.

During his August 2022 testimony before the U.S. Senate, Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the DOJ, claimed the agency’s Election Threats Task Force — which was launched in July 2021 to address this alleged “rise in threats” against election workers — had reviewed and assessed roughly 1,000 allegedly “threatening and harassing” communications directed toward election officials. But two days before Polite’s testimony, the DOJ issued a press release disclosing that only about 11 percent of those 1,000 communications “met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation” and that the “remaining reported contacts did not provide a predication” for further investigation. According to an agency press release a year later, the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force had “charged 14 cases involving threats against the election community and secured nine convictions” as of Aug. 31, 2023.

Got that? In a country with a population of more than 335 million people, only about 100 individuals were investigated by the DOJ for supposedly threatening election workers, and only 14 of them were officially charged.

The Conspiracy Spreads

Virginia isn’t the only state where Democrats are pushing legislation based upon the media’s phony “election workers are under siege!” narrative. Leftist legislators in Florida, Missouri, and Washington introduced bills in recent weeks seeking to increase penalties for those convicted of threatening election officials.

Even worse, some elected Republicans have lent credence to this baseless talking point by prioritizing Democrat proposals. GOP legislators in New Jersey and Nebraska joined their respective Democrat colleagues in cosponsoring legislation cracking down on threats towards election workers this year. In South Dakota, Secretary of State Monae Johnson, a Republican, is spearheading a bill that would deem “Any person who, directly or indirectly, utters or addresses any threat or intimidation to an election official or election worker with the intent to improperly influence an election … guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.”

The measure unanimously passed the Senate State Affairs Committee (8-0) on Wednesday, even after Deputy Secretary of State Tom Deadrick told senators that South Dakota “hasn’t yet experienced threats against poll workers.”

Meanwhile, GOP governors such as Joe Lombardo of Nevada and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma signed respective bills last year into law that similarly increased penalties for threatening election officials. The Oklahoma bill was sponsored by three Republicans.

Other states that have passed laws inspired by Democrats’ election lies include California, Colorado, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont.

Republicans Must Fight Democrat Lies

Much like Democrats’ war against basic election security measures like voter ID, their lying about widespread threats against election officials is a strategy aimed at bringing less — not more — integrity to U.S. elections.

Their strategy of using anecdotal incidents to cast a broader narrative about Republicans isn’t just crafted to scare away independents and moderate voters from the GOP. It’s also designed to dissuade conservatives from partaking in legitimate forms of election oversight, such as poll watching.

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, for example, the Republican National Committee recruited more than 70,000 new poll watchers and workers ahead of Election Day to “help deliver the election transparency that voters deserve.” And of course, Democrats went berserk, parroting the same “threat to democracy” talking point.

Federal law already prohibits individuals from threatening and harassing election workers. Performative proposals to enhance state charges against such crimes are less about protecting people and more about furthering Democrats’ unsubstantiated talking points and scaring away conservatives engaged in the elections process.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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The Real Conspiracy Theorists About U.S. Elections Are Legacy Media


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | NOVEMBER 29, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/29/the-real-conspiracy-theorists-about-u-s-elections-are-legacy-media/

A bunch of 'I voted' stickers on a surface

Not a week goes by in which America’s ethically bankrupt media aren’t pushing lies about the state of the country’s elections, and their latest attack on Republican voters is no different.

On Wednesday, Stateline joined its fellow leftist “news” outlets in fomenting a Democrat-manufactured conspiracy theory that U.S. election workers everywhere are facing constant harassment from constituents. The insinuation, of course, is that these threats are coming from conservative voters who dared to raise questions about the conduct of the 2020 election.

At the center of Stateline’s hit piece is the recent spate of letters filled with fentanyl and other substances sent to local election offices in states such as Washington, Nevada, and Oregon. Instead of disclosing to its readers the evidence indicating the letters were potentially sent by far-left radicals tied to Antifa, Stateline immediately pivoted from reporting on the issue to advancing the left’s “election workers are under attack” narrative and pinning the blame on former President Donald Trump and his supporters.

“Since the 2020 presidential election, state and local election officials nationwide have been bombarded with threats, as lies perpetuated by former President Donald Trump and his allies around ‘rigged’ elections have fueled conspiracy theories and inspired violent reactions to the bureaucrats and temporary workers who run the United States’ democratic process,” the outlet claimed in hyperbolic fashion.

As I previously wrote in these pages, Democrat claims that election workers have experienced a spike in threats since the 2020 election are primarily based on “surveys” issued by leftist organizations and unsubstantiated statements from Democrat election officials. In November 2022, for example, The Washington Post published an article containing assertions by Colorado Democrat Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office that it had “identified hundreds more threats against her since 2020.” Unsurprisingly, the Post gave no indication that it bothered to fact-check these claims.

Just like the Post, however, Stateline was forced to include data from President Biden’s own Department of Justice showing that Democrats’ sky-is-falling elections narrative is total bunk.

In its article, the outlet discloses that, “As of late August, the U.S. Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force had charged 14 people with making threats to election workers and political candidates since the task force was created in 2021, so far leading to nine convictions that came with yearslong criminal sentences.” August 2022 testimony from a DOJ official and a subsequent agency press release further revealed that out of roughly 1,000 communications directed toward election officials that were deemed “threatening and harassing” by the Election Threats Task Force since the force’s inception, only about 11 percent of those contacts “met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation.”

Got that? In a country with a population of more than 335 million people, only about 100 individuals have been investigated by the DOJ for supposedly threatening election workers, and only 14 of them have been officially charged. That doesn’t exactly sound like a widespread crisis.

For a corporate press that loves to toss around the term “conspiracy theory” whenever reporting on legitimate Republican concerns about the integrity of U.S. elections, leftist media outlets such as the Post and Stateline are perfectly fine with fomenting their own conspiracy theories to dishonestly smear their political opponents. In reality, Democrats couldn’t care less about the “security” of American elections. All they care about is acquiring and maintaining power.

The media-wide effort to cast Republicans as threats to “democracy” isn’t just designed to scare away independents and moderate voters from the GOP. It’s to disincentivize conservatives from partaking in legitimate forms of election oversight, such as poll watching.

From elections to lawfare, Democrats have no interest in playing by the same rules as everyone else. And if that means they have to recruit their media allies to push debunked propaganda about Republicans, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Media Gin Up Lies About Election Worker Safety To Escape Ballot-Box Accountability

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | AUGUST 08, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/08/media-gin-up-lies-about-election-worker-safety-to-escape-ballot-box-accountability/

A 2016 election party

Legacy media are once again parroting the debunked lie that there is a growing, widespread problem of Republicans threatening election workers. On Monday, Time Magazine published a melodramatic article about congressional Democrats’ “desperate[] push[]” to include provisions in the next federal spending bill they claim will protect state and local election workers. Of course, Time places the blame for this alleged problem on Donald Trump and his so-called “election denying” supporters, and warns that Congress’s upcoming budget is “likely the last chance” Democrats have to “safeguard” the 2024 election.

“It comes as election officials have faced a titanic upswing in death threats, online intimidation, and abuse,” the article reads.

There’s just one little problem with Time’s fantastical claim: It’s manufactured nonsense.

As I reported in these pages in April, the left’s insistence that there is a widespread conspiracy of Republican voters threatening election officials is simply not true. But don’t take my word for it. Ask Joe Biden’s own Department of Justice (DOJ).

During his August 2022 testimony before the U.S. Senate, Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the DOJ, claimed the agency’s Election Threats Task Force — which was launched in July 2021 to address this alleged “rise in threats” against election workers — had reviewed and assessed roughly 1,000 allegedly “threatening and harassing” communications directed toward election officials. Two days before Polite’s testimony, the DOJ issued a press release disclosing only about 11 percent of those 1,000 communications “met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation” and that the “remaining reported contacts did not provide a predication” for further investigation.

“[T]o recap: In a country of roughly 331 million people, the DOJ — in the span of a year — received roughly 1,000 calls alleging threats toward election workers, in which only about 11 percent of cases warranted a federal investigation,” I wrote at the time.

So how exactly does Time justify its claim that there’s been a “titanic upswing” in threats directed toward election workers since the 2020 contest? The first is by linking to a survey from the Brennan Center for Justice — a highly partisan organization engaged in left-wing activism — claiming to show persistent fear among election workers for “their colleagues’ safety.”

The second is by linking to a November 2022 Washington Post article that includes grandiose statements from Democrat election officials pushing the same sky-is-falling narrative. Among those who commented to the Post was Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, whose office proclaimed it had “identified hundreds more threats against her since 2020.” The Post, of course, didn’t bother to mention whether it vetted her assertion to determine its truthfulness.

What’s equally remarkable about the article is the Post’s willingness to bury the truth from its readers. Not until the article’s 22nd paragraph are readers given the actual data from the DOJ on which I previously reported. Even then, the Post attempts to downplay the truth by regurgitating claims from unnamed election officials who say the DOJ and states’ limited number of prosecutions are “just a fraction of the threats they receive.”

Yes, there are verifiable threats made against election workers, however rare. But it also rarely rains in Death Valley, California. That doesn’t mean we should start building Noah’s Ark 2.0 to prepare for a catastrophic flood there.

What we’re seeing is a media-wide effort to take anecdotal incidents of threats and blow them out of proportion to give the appearance that election workers are under constant siege from so-called “election denying” MAGA Republicans. It’s a Democrat strategy designed to both cast their political opponents as extremists and dissuade conservatives who have legitimate concerns about election integrity from partaking in completely legal forms of electoral oversight (such as poll watching).

Democracy does indeed die in darkness — just not in the way regime-approved media want you to believe.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Corrupt Media Fight Election Accountability With Democrat-Manufactured Lies


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | APRIL 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/24/corrupt-media-fight-election-accountability-with-democrat-manufactured-lies/

election day voters voting at a polling station
Legacy media claim so-called ‘election deniers’ are constantly threatening and harassing election workers throughout the country. But the facts say otherwise.

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It didn’t take long after the 2020 election for legacy media to conjure up a new smear to use against conservatives. For two years, leftists have employed the malicious term “election denier” to silence any American with legitimate concerns about the integrity of U.S. elections.

Alarmed at the grossly mismanaged election in Maricopa County, Arizona, last fall? According to the media, you’re an “election denier.” Worried about the real voter suppression that took place in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and Harris County, Texas? You guessed it, “election denier.”

But in the lead-up to and following the 2022 midterms, media began incorporating this smear into their next phony narrative, which is that these so-called Republican “election deniers” are constantly threatening and harassing election workers throughout the country. Prior to the Nov. 8 election, for example, left-wing outlets ran hit piece after hit piece warning that Republicans were secretly plotting to disrupt local precincts on Election Day.

And while their doomsday predictions (unsurprisingly) never came true, that hasn’t stopped Democrats from attempting to convince the public there’s a widespread conspiracy of Trump supporters threatening local election officials. Within the past several weeks, NBC News and The New York Times have run exposés highlighting election officials in Virginia and Texas, respectively, who recently resigned amid confrontations with fellow Republican officials.

When it comes to the Times’ reporting, however, the article’s headline distorts the reasoning behind the Texas official’s resignation. While the headline reads, “After Threats and Clashes With Republicans, Another Texas Election Official Quits,” the article tacitly admits that Heider Garcia, the elections director for Tarrant County, resigned due to the county’s “creation of an election integrity task force” — not because of the alleged threats against him.

Other outlets to publish similar articles in recent weeks include The Hill and USA Today.

The Facts Tell a Different Story

While there are certainly cases of threats being made against election workers, the relentless narrative pushed by the corporate press that it’s a widespread problem is not true. But you don’t have to take The Federalist’s word for it. President Joe Biden’s own Department of Justice (DOJ) has all but admitted so.

Back in July 2021, the DOJ launched a task force designed to address this alleged “rise in threats against election workers, administrators, officials, and others associated with the electoral process.” According to an agency press release, the task force would “receive and assess allegations and reports of threats against election workers” and work with U.S. attorneys’ offices and the FBI “to investigate and prosecute these offenses where appropriate.” As part of the initiative, the DOJ also launched an election worker hotline, where individuals can report “suspected threats or acts of violence against election workers” to the agency for review and potential investigation.

Predictably, the DOJ did not include any data to justify its claim that there was a “rise in threats against election workers.”

On Aug. 3, the Democrat-controlled Senate held a hearing, titled “Protecting Our Democracy’s Frontline Workers,” in which Judiciary Committee members heard testimony from various federal, state, and local election officials about their experiences working in recent elections. Testifying in the hearing’s first panel was Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the Department of Justice.

In his opening statement, Polite Jr. claimed the DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force had reviewed and assessed roughly 1,000 allegedly “threatening and harassing” communications directed toward election officials, including one incident of physical violence against an election worker. Two days prior, however, the DOJ issued a press release revealing that only about 11 percent of those 1,000 contacts “met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation” and that the “remaining reported contacts did not provide a predication” for such an inquiry.

“In investigations where the source of a reported contact was identified, in 50% of the matters the source contacted the victim on multiple occasions,” the press release reads. “These investigations accordingly encompassed multiple contacts. The number of individual investigations is less than 5% of the total number of reported contacts.”

The DOJ also claimed the task force had charged five individuals at the time, a number Polite Jr. confirmed during his Aug. 3 Senate testimony.

So, to recap: In a country of roughly 331 million people, the DOJ — in the span of a year — received roughly 1,000 calls alleging threats toward election workers, in which only about 11 percent of cases warranted a federal investigation. On top of that, only five individuals had been charged with any type of crime as of the DOJ’s August 2022 press release.

The Verdict

So why are legacy media continuing to push the lie that election workers everywhere are under constant attack, despite publicly available data showing otherwise? And why are Democrats in states such as Nevada and New Mexico advancing legislation based upon this lie, even when there are federal statutes prohibiting the harassment of election workers?

For Democrats, the strategy is two-fold. The first reason is to further the narrative perpetuated by Biden that “MAGA Republicans” represent an existential threat to democracy and Democrats are the party of virtue, “voting rights,” and normalcy. The left hopes that by painting their political opponents as extremists, they’ll be able to sway moderates and independents to their side, even as their political allies use the justice system to target former presidents, chemically castrate children, and collude with Big Tech to censor dissenting voices online.

The second reason is to discourage conservatives with legitimate concerns about election integrity from partaking in completely legal forms of electoral oversight. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, for instance, the Republican National Committee recruited more than 70,000 new poll watchers and workers ahead of Election Day to “help deliver the election transparency that voters deserve.” And of course, Democrats went ballistic, parroting the same “threat to democracy” talking point.

Unlike Democrats, Republicans actually welcome transparency in the electoral process. The attempt by legacy media and leftist politicos to spin a false narrative about conservatives threatening election workers on a grand scale is an attempt to avoid accountability at the ballot box and cast their political opponents as enemies of democracy. It’s a strategy steeped in falsehoods and smears, which for Democrats is nothing new.

Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Islamic State ‘Caliph’: We Will Not Stop until Rome Is Conquered


by 13 Nov 2014

URL of Original Posting Site: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/11/13/Islamic-State-Caliph-We-Will-Not-Stop-Until-Rome-Is-Conquered

 The Islamic State released a letter on Thursday, which it claims was written by its “Khalifah,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In the letter, Baghdadi explained that his subordinates were carrying out their Muslim duty to wage jihad against the Imperial Islamic President ObamaKufr, or nonbelievers. He also revealed an obsessive, seething hatred of Jews. He blamed–in Hitler-like fashion–the Jews for “plundering” Muslim economies and installing corrupt dictators to run Islamic lands. In noting the recent date of his letter, Baghdadi congratulated Islamist entities throughout the Middle East for pledging to his terror group, while also castigating the recent deployment of 1,500 additional U.S. troops into the region. Baghdadi also revealed that the Islamic State will not stop its aggression until Rome is conquered by its forces.

Multiple media outlets claimed last week that Baghdadi was either seriously wounded or killed in an airstrike on an Islamic State position.

The letter began with the Islamic State Khalifa explaining that waging jihad on behalf of Islam is a duty for all Muslims:

Thus, it is upon the Muslims to understand well and realize that fighting is obligatory upon each individual amongst them, and that jihad is the best of deeds and peak of Islam. 

Baghdadi continued, explaining how Islamic State fighters will be aided by Allah in their battles:

They must also realize that Allah will aid the mujahidin [people doing jihad]; this is inevitable. And thus, for this reason the soldiers of the Islamic State will fight. They fight in obedience to Allah and to gain closeness to him. They will never abandon fighting. Even if only one soldier of them remained, they will never abandon fighting, because they defy humiliation and injustice. They will never abandon fighting, because they did not taste honor and dignity except by fighting.

Baghdadi revealed his belief that the U.S.-led coalition is afraid and incapable of defeating his forces:

We see America and its allies stumbling between fear, weakness, inability, and failure. America, Europe, Australia, Canada, their apostate tails and slaves from amongst the rulers of the Muslims’ lands were terrified by the Islamic State.

He then described Jews as money-hungry individuals who controlled the leaders of Muslim countries. Baghdadi said:

The Jews were frightened; they feared for their economy. They feared for the Muslims’ wealth and the goods of our lands, which they plunder, suck dry, enjoy themselves with, and fight us with via their agents from amongst the treacherous rulers of the Muslims’ lands. They fear for their security. They fear the revolt of the Muslim peoples [against their rulers]. They fear their defeat. They fear the return of the Khilafah (caliphate) and the return of Muslims to pioneering and leadership.Christian Persecution

Baghdadi’s verbal assault against America and “the Jews” continued:

America and its allies are terrified, weak, and powerless. Due to their fear and weakness, the Jews covertly and stealthily participate in this crusade. They do not have the courage to announce this, out of the fear of the Muslims.

Baghdadi’s comments on this week’s deployment of additional U.S. troops into the Middle East reveals the letter’s recent date:

Here is Obama who has ordered the deployment of 1,500 additional soldiers under the claim that they are advisors because the Crusaders’ airstrikes and constant bombardment – day and night – upon the positions of the Islamic State have not prevented its advance, not weakened its resolve.Obama-muslim-2-610x400

He promised that the Islamic State will not stop its jihad until Rome is conquered:

By Allah’s permission, they [US-led coalition] will be defeated. And indeed the Muslims will be victorious. By Allah’s promise, they will be victorious. And the march of the mujahidin will continue until they reach Rome.

Not the Jihad Whisperer

The jihadi leader then praised several Islamist groups that had recently pledged to his terror outfit:

Glad tidings, O Muslims for we give you good news by announcing the expansion of the Islamic State to new lands, to the lands of al-Haramay (Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia) and Yemen … to Egypt, Libya, and Algeria.

Baghdadi concluded, explaining to his followers that their enemy was at war with Islam, and that the Islamic State intends to battle those forces:

O Allah, all the armies of kufr (disbelievers) from amongst the Jews, Crusaders, atheists, and apostates gathered against us. They did so in opposition to your religion. … O Allah, support your soldiers and bring your religion triumph.

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