(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) When many on the extreme Left were calling for the abolishing of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau in the spring, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., was slow to jump on board.
Many on social media and within the cable news punditry condemned Harris’ remarks during a Capitol Hill hearing for Ronald Vitiello, President Donald Trump’s nominee for ICE director.
Among them was former ICE boss Tom Homan, who called the comments “disgusting” during an appearance Monday on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.
“For her, as a U.S. Senator, to make that comparison… she failed the American people. ICE is enforcing the law that Congress enacted,” Homan said.
He called on Harris to apologize to ICE and law enforcement.
“They’re not making this up… Shame on her,” Homan said.
As some observed, both the KKK—which was principally a Democrat-run organization to prevent newly emancipated blacks from voting Republican—and the Left’s current position on ICE—designed to prevent the enforcement of immigration rules in order to entrench Democratic electoral power—found the party on the wrong side of the law.
Homan said recent reports of clashes between Tijuana residents and the migrant caravans set up there while hoping to gain entry into the U.S. were not surprising.
“Mexico’s finally saying enough’s enough, and the reason this is coming to a head is because President Trump has taken power—so you know what, our border’s closed for illegal business,” Homan said. “What he’s done is force this caravan to be stuck in Tijuana.
“He’s put this issue on the front burner…. He’s been right on everything he’s done on this border.”
‘No one gives you power. You have to take it from them…’
Nancy Pelosi/IMAGE: C-SPAN via YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In a fawning profile of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., The New York Times Magazine on Monday quoted the former (and likely future) speaker of the House as saying, “No one gives you power. You have to take it from them.”
Whether this is inspiring or terrifying depends on the vantage point. Pelosi—who last year passed her three-decade mark as a member of Congress—has certainly made her share of alarming gaffes, such as the menacing pre-election remark that those opposing Democrats could expect “collateral damage.”
But ironically, one of the biggest fights the San Francisco congresswoman now faces comes from defending against the challengers within her own ranks who seek to take her seat of power from her.
As the Left works through an identity crisis pitting well-funded establishment politicians against grassroots, anti-capitalist radicals, the speakership will be a test of just how much pull Pelosi has within the Democratic Party.
The answer seems to be quite a lot.
Despite many having campaigned on promises to help oust the polarizing Pelosi from her leadership post, few in the House Democratic caucus have put forth serious challenges to her.
According to Roll Call, at least three of those who came out decisively against her before the Nov. 6 election are now getting cold feet after meeting with Pelosi. The article names New Jersey Reps.-elect Mike Sherrill and Andy Kim, as well as Michigan’s Haley Stevens, all of whom ran on platforms of change and throwing out the old.
One of the potential anti-Pelosi newcomers @AndyKimNJ leaves himself some wiggle room:
“Right now I’m not making any commitments … I certainly wanted a new generation of leadership and that’s certainly still something I want”
Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, who had indicated an intention to challenge Pelosi, seemed also to hedge on that possibility after meeting with her.
Fudge told reporters that she could be persuaded to drop her bid if the incentives were right. “There is a point, yes, but it’s going to take some,” she said.
Fudge’s name was absent from a letter signed by 16 next-gen Dems calling for Pelosi’s ouster, despite her having signed a draft copy, reported the Washington Examiner. However, the article noted that Fudge’s omission gave no clear indication whether she was backing down from a challenge or whether it meant, conversely, that a speaker bid was imminent.
Conservative political action committee America Rising noted the names of several other upstart anti-Pelosi campaigners missing from the recent Gang of 16: Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Jared Golden (Maine), Abigail Spanberger (Va.) and Jason Crow (Colo.).
“The divide in the party over Pelosi shows that Democrats are in in complete disarray heading into the new Congressional term,” the PAC wrote in a statement.
Interestingly, Pelosi’s bid has gained her some unlikely allies.
I can get Nancy Pelosi as many votes as she wants in order for her to be Speaker of the House. She deserves this victory, she has earned it – but there are those in her party who are trying to take it away. She will win! @TomReedCongress
Some Republicans in the House have also said they would be willing to support her if she implements bipartisan rules changes that would do more to empower individual members over their respective caucuses.
‘From where I’m standing today, knowing what I know, they’re both philosophically very much alike…’
Cindy Hyde-Smith/IMAGE: YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) If Democrats manage to flip another seat in the U.S. Senate—narrowing Republicans’ majority, and their midterm net gain, to a single vote—the GOP may have Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to thank.
As the dust settles on the many recount crises of the 2018 election, the GOP has emerged largely victorious from hard-fought legal battles in Georgia and Florida.
However, with a concession in Arizona having whittled away at the projected Senate majority by officially giving to Democrats the seat of retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, all eyes now fall on whether the Left can orchestrate a flip in the Mississippi runoff election scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 27.
While many around the nation will have their attention directed elsewhere, emerging from their Thanksgiving tryptophan comas and tending to their Black Friday battle scars, the racially charged campaign between Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy in one of the Deep South’s most reliably red states is a prime candidate for Democrat shenanigans.
“There’s never been an election on Nov. 27—a couple days after Thanksgiving—before,” Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist overseeing the Espy campaign, told the Daily Beast. “We don’t know if [turnout is] going to be 300,000 or a million.”
To top it all off, like last year’s special election in Alabama to replace former Sen. Jeff Sessions, the GOP may again be forced to reconcile the greater good (in padding its majority) with the embrace of a candidate who has a knack for generating controversy.
It was at McConnell’s behest that Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryan in April appointed Smith, previously the state’s commissioner of agriculture and commerce, to take over for longtime senator Thad Cochran when the octogenarian resigned citing health reasons.
McConnell hoped to ensure a reliable moderate would replace Cochran, who had narrowly staved off a challenge on the Right from conservative Chris McDaniel, and to give Smith an incumbency advantage leading into the midterm election.
With no primary to secure the GOP nomination this year, McDaniel ran against Smith in the Nov. 6 special election, drawing 16.5 percent of the vote to Smith’s 41.5 percent. Espy finished with 40.6 percent, just under 8,000 votes shy of Smith’s lead. Since no candidate finished above 50 percent, the state’s laws required a runoff election between the two leading candidates.
Chris McDaniel/IMAGE: YouTube
Under normal circumstances, victory for Smith would be a lock, as she would likely draw most of the nearly 150,ooo votes McDaniel had garnered. But with so much at stake, nothing can be taken for granted—and Smith, for her part, has done little to help ease the worries in her recently adopted party.
In the span of a week following the Nov. 6 election, she drew negative headlines, first for joking that if one of her supporters invited her to a public hanging, she would be in the front row. Supporters of Espy, who is black, were quick to link the comments to Mississippi’s troubled racial past and history of Jim Crow-era lynchings.
The controversies—and the increased national media scrutiny on the midterms’ final race—may well help to mobilize Democrats.
Espy’s fundraising during the regular election was paltry compared with that of many battleground campaigns—in a year where Democrats’ funding, driven by billionaire plutocrats and special interests taking advantage of looser spending restrictions, far outpaced their Republican counterparts.
But liberals with leftover campaign cash burning a hole in their warchests could set their sights on the Mississippi race if victory appears within reach—particularly as a way to validate the tight losing campaigns of black gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum (Fla.) and Stacey Abrams (Ga.).
Moreover, as of September, McDaniel had declined to endorse Smith in a possible runoff scenario, despite heaping his criticism mainly on Espy.
“From where I’m standing today, knowing what I know, they’re both philosophically very much alike,” McDaniel told Mississippi Today. “But because of Mr. Espy’s past indictments [for accepting illegal gifts] and his past direct work with the Clinton administration, that causes me grave concern.”
Should Republicans encounter an enthusiasm gap—either in protest of Smith, due to general election fatigue, or because an unexpected influx of voters in the liberal base, particularly the black vote—it could spell trouble.
Like the special Alabama election, in which Democrat Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore to replace Sessions—thereby delivering a symbolic victory to stem the Trumpian momentum of 2016 and shift the media narrative—the Left may see Mississippi as its last stand before the 2020 race to defeat Trump ensues.
The similarities between the two special elections weren’t lost on Trippi.
“If you overlaid the Alabama result on the Mississippi electorate, Doug Jones would have won Mississippi by 8 points,” Trippi told Vice News. “I’m not saying that there aren’t things to get over. I’m saying if you thought Alabama wasn’t possible and you look at the data and the real facts and you look at who is registered—then if a Democrat can win in Alabama, a Democrat can win in Mississippi.”
Although President Trump was initially hesitant to endorse Smith, he eventually threw his support behind her.
‘It is shameful that Judicial Watch attorneys must continue to battle the State and Justice Departments, which still defend Hillary Clinton…’
Hillary Clinton/IMAGE: Bloomberg News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In the same week that speculation over on-again, off-again potential 2020 presidential contender Hillary Clinton again turned toward the likelihood of another run, it looks as if questions over her notorious missing emails, like Clinton herself, aren’t going anywhere.
Government accountability watchdog Judicial Watch announced Thursday that a federal court ruled Clinton would be required to submit responses to two questions related to the creation of the e-mails server and her unverified claims that it was, essentially, a backup of what was on the State Department server.
While Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the break was good news, he expressed frustration with the protracted legal battle.
“It is shameful that Judicial Watch attorneys must continue to battle the State and Justice Departments, which still defend Hillary Clinton, for basic answers to our questions about Clinton’s email misconduct,” Fitton said.
The questions were an addendum to 25 previous deposition questions for which Clinton was required to submit sworn responses in August 2016 as the result of Judicial Watch’s legal filings under the Freedom of Information Act. Clinton and her attorneys have 30 days to comply with the new ruling.
However, the majority of Clinton’s earlier responses simply objected to the line of questioning as being outside the scope of discovery, with several stating that Clinton could not recall any direct information about the subject. It is unlikely that Clinton’s new answers will help to elucidate anything regarding the estimated 30,000missing emails.
In addition to the mishandling of classified materials and obstruction issues, more serious concerns have sprung up that Clinton’s server may have been hacked by Chinese spies to receive copies of all her emails, and that the FBI may have been complicit in covering up the security breach.
Although supporters of President Donald Trump—who promised during the 2016 debates to pursue a criminal case against Clinton—have continued to make “Lock her up” a rallying cry symbolizing the brazenness and dearth of accountability for corrupt public officials, Trump faced a roadblock in former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who investigated but never followed up.
Many people in our Country are asking what the “Justice” Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and “acid washed” 33,000 Emails? No justice!
New interim Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has signaled that he is more in line than Sessions with Trump’s prosecutorial priorities, and Trump is also likely to seek a permanent replacement who will be more responsive to executive input on Clinton and on the Mueller investigation into Trump’s contact with Russia during the campaign.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whose leverage as a swing voter in the narrowly split chamber with a miniscule GOP majority will likely add to his outsized influence within the party, said recently that he supports both investigations being fully explored if he is appointed chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
‘He wouldn’t hit anybody. Especially a woman. He’s got two daughters…’
(Ben Sellers) Let us take a moment to remember the “Believe all women” movement.
Lawyer Michael Avenatti, while representing Brett Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick in her salacious—and now largely debunked, potentially perjurious—claims against the Supreme Court nominee, would certainly have wanted us to, no matter the credibility.
But as Avenatti, who was arrested Wednesday following an apparent incident of domestic violence against a female companion, now faces his own scandal, the circumstances are, uh, different.
I want to be clear: I DID NOT commit domestic violence nor have I ever committed domestic violence. I did not strike any woman nor have I ever. I did not strike my ex-wife in the face nor did I hit anyone else in the face. I am a decent man & I look forward to being exonerated.
As the story broke Wednesday, with celebrity gossip site TMZ leading the charge, it was widely reported in the media—including by Liberty Headlines, which culled its information from the Tribune News Service’s subscription-based wire content—that the victim was Avenatti’s estranged ex-wife.
However, CNN national political correspondent MJ Lee later tweeted that she had spoken with ex-wife Lisa Storie-Avenatti by phone and that the latter strongly denied involvement. Interestingly, she explained that Avenatti, as a family man, could never have done such a thing.
I spoke with Avenatti’s wife on the phone. “I haven’t see Michael in months. It’s a complete fabrication,” she said. “Bruises on my face? It is insanity. He wouldn’t hit anybody. Especially a woman. He’s got two daughters.”
It’s easy to imagine what the reaction on CNN would have been to such a statement had it come during the Kavanaugh hearing.
Rather, when Kavanaugh became emotional before the Senate Judiciary Committee while discussing his two daughters and the difficulty he and his wife had faced explaining the situation to them, he was mocked and scorned.
While Avenatti’s ordeal has helped the Left to suddenly recover its empathy, it also has helped liberals to regain another virtue, recognizing the importance of concepts like “due process” and “innocent until proven guilty.”
TMZ reported that Avenatti’s most famous client, Trump accuser Stormy Daniels, issued a statement urging people not to jump to conclusions. “We should all reserve judgement until the investigation—an investigation Michael has said he welcomes—is complete, and that’s what I’m going to do,” Daniels said.
However, it seems unlikely that Avenatti, who had declared himself a 2020 presidential challenger to Trump but was already seen by some on the Left as harmful to the cause, will be able to regain his standing.
While conservative Fox News pundit Sean Hannity said on his show Wednesday that he intended to reserve judgment now that the tables have turned on Avenatti, actress and #MeToo activist Alyssa Milano was less forgiving.
Milano, the former child star of sitcom “Who’s the Boss” and films like “Poison Ivy II,” has become one of the Hollywood-driven feminist movement’s leading voices. At the invitation of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, she was seated prominently in the gallery during the Kavanaugh hearings.
On Wednesday, she tweeted her condemnation of Avenatti following the “totally disgusting” allegations.
Totally disgusting. And before anyone asks me, yes, I’m disavowing Avenatti. I do not care what side he’s on. #Bastahttps://t.co/sHK1PggVsj
The “#Basta” hashtag—Italian for “enough”—had been used by Avenatti in his own tweets advocating women’s causes. Others Twitter users also have begun repurposing it, now with an added layer of irony.
Correction: Initial wire reports indicated that Avenatti’s estranged ex-wife was the domestic-abuse victim. The New York Daily News now reports that his ex-wife denies any involvement and defended him. The story and headline have been updated to reflect the change.
Michael Avenatti (screen shot: MSNBC/Youtube)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Michael Avenatti, the Trump-trolling attorney most famous for representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against the president, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly assaulting a female acquaintance, according to a report originally broken by celebrity gossip site TMZ.
Law enforcement sources told TMZ that Avenatti was charged with felony domestic assault after allegedly beating up the woman at a ritzy apartment building in Los Angeles on Tuesday, according to New York Daily News.
TMZ said the incident happened as Avenatti attempted to evict the woman from the apartment. While filing the domestic violence report, the article noted, her face appeared “swollen and bruised” with “red marks.”
A second confrontation occurred on Wednesday, TMZ reports, after the woman attempted to gather her things with help from the building security. Avenatti showed up shortly thereafter screaming profanities and claiming, “She hit me first.”
Avenatti was reportedly still in custody Wednesday afternoon and could not immediately be reached for comment, said New York Daily News.
Once the darling of nearly every CNN and MSNBC talk show, who declared himself a potential 2020 presidential challenger for Trump, Avenatti already had fallen into a degree of disrepute after a failed gambit to grab headlines during the contentious and highly watched confirmation saga of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Following the accusations of Christine Blasey Ford and another accuser, Avenatti used his media clout to dramatically trot out a third accuser, Julie Swetnick. However, Swetnick’s outlandish claims of having witnessed the conservative jurist participating in orgies were quickly dispatched.
Many of the Left resented Avenatti’s forsaking the more credible witnesses in the interest of his own profit and showmanship.
A comprehensive review of all of the claims, released last month by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, thoroughly debunked the uncorroborated accounts and recommended both Swetnick and Avenatti be investigated by the Department of Justice for potential perjury due to the use of a sworn affidavit.
Around the same time, Avenatti faced a setback in the Stormy Daniels case as a judge threw out a defamation lawsuit she had pressed and ruled that Daniels was obligated to pay Trump’s considerable legal expenses for the frivolous claim.
In May, Avenatti was sued by his former legal partner, Jason Frank, for breach of contract after missing the deadline in a settlement agreement to pay Frank $4.85 million.
‘Failing to take immediate action … would only encourage additional mass unlawful migration and further overwhelming of the system.’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Derided by Democrats like Joe Biden during campaign season as being thousands of miles away and reduced to a fearmongering tactic, the caravan of predominantly Central American migrants, as promised, is now at the doorstep of the United States.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that a group of 356 arrived by bus in Tijuana, near the California border, on Tuesday and that dozens of others were starting to arrive at other checkpoints.
San Diego’s Fox 5 showed a live-stream video on its Facebook account of some approaching the rusted coastline border fence at the city’s Friendship Park.
Other images from the local media showed border officials scrambling to fortify sections of the fence with barbed wire to deter crossing.
The Union Tribune reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection planned to close three lanes at the San Ysidro Port of Entry and one at the Otay Mesa Port while it installed “port hardening infrastructure equipment” in preparation for the arrivals.
By many estimates, the caravan had swollen to a total of around 14,000 presumed refugee-seekers by late October. No recent estimates were available to determine whether it had shrunken along the way or continued to grow in the past two weeks.
Although Mexican officials had attempted to forestall the trek, offering temporary residency, many reportedly scoffed at the proposal.
As President Donald Trump continued his efforts to make good on a promise to deploy troops to the border, he faced unprecedented resistance from court orders and from the Pentagon, which initially balked at the idea before agreeing to send 5,200 to support border patrols prior to last week’s midterm election.
Counting the national guardsmen already dispatched, more than 7,000 active-duty troops are now set to guard the border through Dec. 15, with the possibility that as many as 15,000 may be sent.
Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border. Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!
Even as the caravan members arrived, Trump adversaries like retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., continued to criticize the deployment as a political stunt, saying it was unfortunate that the troops—some of whom he said were deployed in Tucson, at least 60 miles from the nearest point of entry, would have to miss their Thanksgiving holiday in order to protect the border.
While efforts to prevent the rock-throwing rabble-rousers from setting foot on U.S. soil were underway, questions also lingered on how to accommodate those who crossed—thus entitling them at minimum to an interrogation and asylum hearing—in the already overstretched tent cities established by Customs and Border Protection.
Migrants would need to wait several weeks before even being admitted for processing, The Union-Tribune reported. Already, the waiting list for asylum-seekers is about 2,500 long.
“If they really cared about addressing this, they wouldn’t be deploying military, they’d be deploying asylum officers to the border,” Erika Pinheiro, an attorney with the group Al Otro Lado, told The Union-Tribune.
Trump has bemoaned what he said is billions of dollars spent annually on the broken asylum process and has dangled the possibility several executive orders to act as deterrents—including the reinstatement of a controversial “zero-tolerance” policy that would permit family separations during processing and a challenge to the 14th Amendment’s “birthright citizenship” entitlements.
Last week, he issued a formal proclamation addressing the mass migration, saying he would suspend asylum eligibility for those who attempt to enter the U.S. unlawfully or without proper documentation.
“Failing to take immediate action to stem the mass migration the United States is currently experiencing and anticipating would only encourage additional mass unlawful migration and further overwhelming of the system,” Trump said.
“Presidential Proclamation Addressing Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United States” https://t.co/9blzn1XGyS
Marc Elias/IMAGE: Maxwell School of Syracuse University
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In 2013, Democrat attorney Marc Elias, a partner at the Perkins Coie firm who had served as general counsel for the John Kerry presidential campaign, joined a panel at Syracuse University to discuss campaign finance reform.
In his introductory remarks, Elias offered a revealing anecdote about his own motivations: “My daughter reminded me that when she was 6 and asked me to play a board game with her, the first thing I did, being a lawyer, was I said, ‘Fine, I’ll play Chutes and Ladders, but I want to read the instructions, because I want to figure out how I can win.”
Whether the goal is beating his 6-year-old daughter at a children’s board game, or defrauding American voters and taxpayers by exploiting the vulnerabilities in their most trusted institutions, Elias has been very good at winning for the past two decades.
He has represented a veritable who’s who of left-wing figures, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren.
But lest some liberals see in his efforts a sort of nobility, or at least fair play—using the rules of the game to re-rig, in the Left’s favor, systems that Elias sincerely believed had been rigged against them—his other pursuits, such as loosening campaign-finance laws and shielding his clients from ethics violations, leave no doubt that Elias’s idea of ‘winning’ is not for the betterment of society.
In his current role representing incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D.-Fla., in the most expensive Congressional race to date, whatever the outcome, Elias could see big returns thanks to a 2014 spending-bill rider he helped Congressional leaders to write that raised by more than sevenfold the amount wealthy donors could contribute to national campaign committees for things like attorney’s fees.
‘Doing It to Win’
Brenda Snipes/IMAGE: YouTube
In a statement Elias made about the current Florida recount—in which his client, Nelson, has trailed behind current Gov. Rick Scott by a narrow margin—Elias said, “We’re doing this not just because it’s automatic, but we’re doing it to win.”
A last-minute coup for Nelson—whose deficit already has narrowed from more than 50,000 votes on Election Day evening to around 12,500 a week later, as boxes of unaccounted-for ballots continued turning up in Broward County under elections supervisor Brenda Snipes—would not be a surprise to anyone.
“My predictions come true with a remarkable degree of accuracy on these things,” Elias said in a conference call interview last Thursday, reported by leftist blog Talking Points Memo.
Even while liberal publications like Mother Jones highlight Elias’s “longshot” plan to recalibrate voting machines in order to discover a supposed 24,000 Democratic “undervotes” on the Senate ticket, a judge in Broward County denied Scott’s request to impound the machines in order to prevent tampering, saying there was nothing substantiating Scott’s accusations of dirty tricks, the Sun Sentinel reported.
“If someone in this county has evidence of voter fraud, they should report it to their local law enforcement officer,” said Broward Circuit Judge Jack Tuter, before chiding Scott for even insinuating the possibility of Orwellian impropriety: “We need to be careful what we say. Words mean things.”
However, he has no difficulty in blurring the lines between the two.
In addition to providing legal representation, Elias and his firm have also played a major role in the flow of money to and from Democratic national committees. Perkins Coie notoriously served as the intermediary and money handlers for its clients in the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee with Fusion GPS, through which Elias commissioned opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump.
The Free Beacon noted that in the past Elias has effectively helped to shield Democratic politicians such as Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill and Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes amid separate accusations that each inappropriately used Senate or campaign funds for luxurious travel expenses.
Some cases have involved political conflicts of interest, such as Grimes’ case, in which she chartered vehicles from her father’s catering company. Elias also was deployed for damage control when North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband was found to be receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal stimulus grants, and in another case where Nevada’s Harry Reid attempted to funnel $31,000 in campaign funding to his granddaughter as a “holiday gift.”
However, while rendering legal services and representing politicians on the campaign trail, Elias and his firm may have their own conflicts of interest to deal with. Campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.org ranked Perkins Coie in the top 5 percent of more than 18,000 PACs and organizations it tracks for political contributions.
Nearly all of its contributions all go to Democrats, including two major clients, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which it gave just under $74,000 and $32,000 respectively for the 2018 campaign.
Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, who recently managed to overcome an Election Day deficit to best Republican Martha McSally, was another of the firm’s top recipients, receiving nearly $21,000.
A Broken System
Harry Reid/Photo by Center for American Progress Action Fund (CC)
Despite his firm’s mutually serving generosity with Democrats, though, Elias has tried to fashion himself as a champion of campaign finance reform.
Former Federal Election Commission chairman Robert Lenhard told Politico, “There is no Democratic-side campaign finance lawyer who is more important than Marc Elias—that is without a doubt.”
But the issue Elias has is not so much reining in the massive spending and closing loopholes that allow an influx of dark money into races like the one in Florida.
Rather than use his legal clout to challenge the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United decision, which afforded First Amendment protections to small businesses like a conservative film production company seeking to make non-monetary political contributions, Elias went the other direction, paving the way for mega-corporations like his law firm and billionaire plutocrat clients to have nearly unfettered ability to donate.
Elias, in his 2013 consortium at Syracuse University, said, “The resolution is not whether the campaign finance system ought to be more regulated or ought to be less regulated … my proposition is simply this: It is broken as it sits today.”
A year later, he had achieved his goal of “fixing” the system. Working with his longtime client Reid, the departing Senate majority leader—in cooperation with then-House Speaker John Boehner—Elias helped slip into a year-end $1.1 billion spending bill a rider that raised the amount a wealthy individual donor could give to national party committees from $97,200 to $777,600, according to Politico.
Not surprisingly, the 2018 midterms broke records as being the most expensive on the books, and topping all others is the Florida senate race, which yielded more than $180 million in spending, with roughly half being outside (non-candidate) spending.
In the top eight Senate races alone for the 2018 election cycle, all of which were in tightly fought battleground states, the total cost was $840 million. This is more money than the projected 2018 Gross Domestic Product of 11 of the world’s 193 countries, according to the International Monetary Fund—and certain only to increase in 2020.
Of course, one of the restrictions lifted in the 2014 spending rider was on money that could be applied toward legal fees, Politico noted, “including some for legal fees that are likely going to be collected by [Elias’] own firm.”
As Elias told Politico, his area of law “is always interesting and usually rewarding.”
‘Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year…’
Note: This is the third in a multi-part series examining Democrat attorney Marc Elias. This article covers Elias’ role as the middle man between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Fusion GPS firm in commissioning the infamous ‘Steele dossier’ in 2016. Other articles in the series explore Elias’ role in election recounts, ‘sue till blue’ redistricting and shielding politicians under investigation for financial improprieties.
Marc Elias/IMAGE: Michael McIntee and The Uptake via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) For the past two decades, Marc Elias, the chief political law attorney at Perkins Coie, representing many top-level Democrats, has been directly implicated in nefarious election-related practices through redistricting and recounts.
However, in his capacity as official counsel for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, Elias’ guiding hand in seemingly corrupting and politicizing the nation’s most trusted government institutions went beyond the courtroom and into the highest reaches of America’s law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering apparati.
Despite its failure to derail the candidacy and subsequent presidency of Donald Trump, the Steele dossier—in which Elias likely played a pivotal role—has proved a source of constant distraction and polarization during the first two years of Trump’s administration, while further eroding an already shaken public trust in the ethics, motives and allegiances of “deep state” bureaucratic officials.
Stealing Elections?
As previously reported, Marc Elias has a long history of turning narrow losses for Democrats into victories—where questionable ballots appear after the race already has been all but certified.
Most recently, he has led the effort in Florida, where recounts are currently underway in both the Senate race between Democrat incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott, and in the gubernatorial race between Democrat Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum and Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis.
Trying to STEAL two big elections in Florida! We are watching closely!
With Republicans still holding an edge early Monday, Broward County, which is notorious for election mismanagement and possible fraud, was continuing to find new votes, as Trump tweeted Monday:
The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!
In addition to having a hand in many such recount efforts—some giving Democrats in Congress a majority or supermajority—Elias also had a lead role, circumventing many state legislatures, in a redistricting push that targeted several tossup states.
Barring any court reversals, the results in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina and, of course, Florida will likely turn some of Trump’s key 2016 battleground victories into a solid blue in 2020.
Trump downplayed the possible implications in his own re-election efforts, expressing confidence that his margins of support would be strong enough to overcome the handicaps of a stacked deck.
In the 2016 Election I was winning by so much in Florida that Broward County, which was very late with vote tabulation and probably getting ready to do a “number,” couldn’t do it because not enough people live in Broward for them to falsify a victory!
But there is plenty of reason for Trump to be worried as Elias played a part in launching the “witch hunt” that has become the single greatest headache of Trump’s presidency thus far: helping to commission a dubiously sourced, largely debunked piece of opposition research known as the Steele dossier.
Steele-ing the Presidency
Christopher Steele/IMAGE: YouTube
British newspaper The Independent said that it was Elias, working on behalf of Clinton and the DNC, who in April 2016 retained Fusion GPS—the research firm that compiled information about the Trump campaign from ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
The reports and research Steele generated then were given directly to Elias during the course of the election.
The unverified claims, many of which eventually went public after leaking to the media, included not only the suggestion that Trump campaign officials had colluded with Russia to hack DNC servers, but also sordid and salacious rumors suggesting the Russians had compromising information to blackmail Trump.
All indications are that Elias’ law firm, Perkins Coie, helped funnel money from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to Fusion GPS. As Breitbart noted recently, that included a combined total of $9.2 million from Clinton and the DNC for “legal and compliance consulting” in the span from around November 2015 to December 2016.
In the course of doing his research, Steele, in turn, likely paid off several Kremlin-linked Russians to provide the suspect information, meaning the DNC may have been supporting the very same people who had hacked its servers in order to try to implicate Trump in the hacking.
When The Washington Postfirst broke the story in October 2017 that linked Elias and Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS, Elias “vigorously” denied any involvement to New York Times reporter Ken Vogel.
It was no surprise he turned to Vogel, a sympathetic ear who, while operating as chief investigative reporter at Politico, showed a penchant for hounding conservative philanthropists Charles and David Koch. Prior to the 2016 election, Vogel was outed by Wikileaks and criticized by other media institutions for vetting his articles with the DNC before publication.
According to The Daily Caller, “Elias’ denial appears to have been intentionally misleading in light of new reporting … [that] Elias reportedly hired Fusion to dig up dirt on Trump as part of a project that became the Trump dossier.”
But even liberals’ vaunted Gray Lady knew it couldn’t maintain the ruse. Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted:
Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year https://t.co/vXKRV1wRJc
Reporting at the time claimed that the opposition research into Trump had originally begun during the Republican primary race, when an anonymous GOP donor had secured Fusion GPS.
Although those on the Left pointed to this as justification, suggesting it was about Trump’s character and not partisan politics, most of Trump’s main GOP contenders cast doubt on the claim, with The Washington Examiner‘s Byron York saying “GOP donor” was likely a case of semantic games.
“The reason it is not at all believable that a Republican was behind it is, nobody used [any information] from it,” Terry Sullivan, campaign manager for Sen. Marco Rubio, told York. “Everybody was pretty damn desperate at the end. If someone had a kitchen sink, they would have thrown it.”
Only the Beginning…
Sydney Blumenthal/IMAGE: CNBC via YouTube
Efforts to unravel the web of intrigue surrounding the source of the Steele dossier led Republicans in the House Oversight, Intelligence and Judiciary committees down a seemingly endless trail of rabbit holes, pointing toward a rogue’s gallery of leftist conspirators such as billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and unsavory Clinton associate Sidney Blumenthal.
But the smear attack that Elias helped orchestrate was merely the prelude to the real story, as Obama’s Justice Department and FBI soon took up the cause.
At the same time that the DNC and Clinton campaign discontinued their funding of the Fusion GPS research in October 2016, the FBI began making payments to Steele and Fusion GPS related to their investigations into the Russian conspiracy charges.
In May 2017, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed to lead an investigation into the claims. While it appears likely to conclude soon—either due to Mueller’s completion or due to pressure from acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker—the investigation continues to lend fuel to Democrats’ attacks on Trump.
Although no corroborating evidence has yet been presented publicly linking Trump with any collusion or campaign violations, as a result of the investigation that the Steele accusations spawned, several Trump associates have been prosecuted on unrelated white-collar charges. Some having struck plea deals with Mueller in return for lighter sentencing.
Meanwhile, Trump has succeeded in using the allegations to expose the corruption of several top-ranking “deep state” officials. Among the revelations are that:
The FBI continued to use the information from the dossier, despite a lack of corroborative evidence, to apply for multiple warrants through the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to spy on the Trump campaign under false pretenses.
Peter Strzok/IMAGE: Fox Business via Youtube
The former FBI counterintelligence chief, Peter Strzok, was a vicious and remorseless partisan who not only pushed the Russia conspiracy in an effort to set up Trump, but simultaneously worked to actively suppress information implicating Hillary Clinton in an e-mail scandal that he also oversaw.
Strzok exchanged many text messages expressing his intentions with his paramour, FBI attorney Lisa Page, who was one of the initial investigators working for Mueller to investigate Trump’s involvement with Russia. The lovebirds’ actions were strongly repudiated in a report by the DOJ inspector general, despite claims that there was no political bias in the investigations.
Strzok’s boss, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe was married to Jill McCabe—a 2015 candidate for a Virginia state election who received $700,000 in campaign cash from a close Clinton ally and former fundraiser, then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, while her husband was overseeing the investigation into Clinton. McCabe also was accused of using FBI resources to benefit his wife’s campaign.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who took direct oversight of the Mueller investigation when former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, was revealed to have had conversations with McCabe about wearing a wire in meetings with Trump in order to ensnare the president.
Several high-ranking former FBI officials, including McCabe and former Director James Comey, likely used selective leaking of information to the media in order to extend their investigations and gain leverage with the FISA courts. One or the other—or both—then likely lied about doing so in testimony before Congress.
Whether Elias, as Clinton’s top campaign lawyer, was simply a cog in the machine or a ringleader in these efforts remains unknown.
While Trump attempted to declassify several crucial documents related to the Steele dossier, FISA applications and FBI investigation, the DOJ quickly tamped down his efforts to do so in September, despite Congressional calls for transparency.
With the House soon to hand over the reins to Democrats in the next Congress, the crucial questions are unlikely to soon be answered, though many more continue to be raised.
‘When a party loses a statewide election, it’s not because their opponents have cleverly divided their voters into a district or two … it’s the product of a larger political failure…’
Note: This is the second in a multi-part series examining Democrat attorney Marc Elias. This article covers Elias’ role in state redistricting challenges. Other articles will explore Elias’ role in election recounts, the Steele dossier and campaign fundraising violations.
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Attorney Marc Elias, touted as Democrats’ go-to guy for issues related to recounts and redistricting, has had his work cut out for him following the recent midterm election.
Elias, the chairman of political law practice at high-power firm Perkins Coie, boasts a long track record of reversing Republican victories through the recount process—typically under dubious circumstances.
Most recently, he has been secured by incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson to fight his narrow election-night loss to Republican challenger Rick Scott. With other contentious legal disputes emerging in the Florida and Georgia gubernatorial elections and the Arizona Senate race, Elias will likely have some kind of a role.
As soon as Democrats sent their best Election stealing lawyer, Marc Elias, to Broward County they miraculously started finding Democrat votes. Don’t worry, Florida – I am sending much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!
But while Elias, who was general counsel for both the Hillary Clinton and John Kerry presidential campaigns, now has his moment in the national spotlight to shift the political power structure toward the Democrats, he also has been working behind the scenes for much longer to steer the election—by challenging the redistricting functions of state legislatures within the court system.
The direct result of his efforts included several Democratic congressional pickups in swing states like Virginia and a bluer map for the 2020 presidential election in states that once were highly competitive.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee’s war-chest—already far outpaced by the well-heeled left—was forced to dedicate additional resources to contests in places that once had been all but assured, and taxpayers continue to line Elias’s pockets challenging the rulings of activist left-wing tribunals that have been tied up in the court system.
The Gerrymandering Obsession
During a recent episode of “The View,” liberal co-host Joy Behar lamented the mixed election results in which Republicans were able to maintain and even build on their small majority in the U.S. Senate.
This Senate majority not only assures an easier road to judicial and Cabinet appointments for at least the next two years, but also helps to protect President Donald Trump from removal should Democrats in the House of Representatives seek to impeach him for partisan reasons.
As ABC political analyst Matthew Dowd discussed Democrats’ winning the popular vote turnout contest while still losing politically in the Senate races, Behar interjected, “Because of gerrymandering.”
Behar’s knee-jerk response was not only revealing of her limited scope of political knowledge, but also of the party’s obsession with the notion that the system is inherently rigged against them, which in turn justifies their efforts to re-rig in their favor by any means necessary.
In the face of President Barack Obama’s staggering losses during his two terms—netting a total of more than 1,030 seats flipped to the GOP in state and national races—the Left desperately needed a scapegoat.
Obama’s first midterm, in 2010, during which Democrats lost an unprecedented six Senate seats, six governorships and 63 House seats, flipped the House and sent a clear message about the Affordable Care Act that had been passed a few months earlier, as well as the condition of the economy and other crucial issues regarding the direction of the country.
Their main nemesis du jour was gerrymandering, the redistricting process that got its name from Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812, when it was first implemented to give the party in power an electoral advantage. The word was a portmanteau of Gerry’s name and the salamander-like district that he had signed off on creating.
However, few have disputed in the past that if consistently applied it benefits both parties, resulting in a sort of imperfect stasis, another factor in the political calculus that functions as a sort of check and balance from one election to the next, with no cleaner way of ensuring fairness and accountability having been provided for under the law.
In a piece Politico published last year as prelude to a potentially landmark Supreme Court case, author Jeff Greenfield noted that the Left’s “defeats did not happen because of gerrymandering … In order for the GOP to use its power to entrench its majorities, it had to win those majorities in the first place.”
The article continued, “That happened because Republicans and their conservative allies poured resources into a workmanlike effort to win control over state politics, while Democrats were mesmerized by the more glamorous fight to win and hold the White House.”
As Greenfield noted, Republican gains in the Senate and governor’s races actually served as an argument against the Left’s gerrymandering excuse, since it is impossible to redistrict them without redrawing the state lines.
“What has happened, rather, is that the Democratic Party has lost touch not just with the white working class, of which we’ve heard so much this past year, but with a much broader segment of American voters,” Greenfield said.
“When a party loses a statewide election, it’s not because their opponents have cleverly divided their voters into a district or two, or because their voters are ‘clustered’ in a city or two; it’s the product of a larger political failure.”
Redistricting from the Bench
Whether or not it was a symptom of a larger political failure and being out of touch with a critical mass of voters, that didn’t stop Democrats from wanting to right the wrong by rigging the system in their favor.
Twitter challenge: Wisconsin has a partisanship score (PVI) of EVEN. Below, I’ve drawn a GOP gerrymander where 6/8 districts have a score of R+7 or higher.
I will personally award $7,000 to the first follower who draws a Dem gerrymander where 6/8 districts are D+7 or higher. pic.twitter.com/h0dJ922FAE
If Republicans were going to use state legislatures and elected offices to entrench their power, the Democrats would need to use activist courts and the un-elected bureaucracy to unravel the laws.
Their first big break came as the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases emerging from the 2011 redistricting: Gill vs. Whitford in Wisconsin, which plaintiffs argued favored Republicans, and Benisek vs. Lamone in Maryland, in which Democrats in power had redrawn a district to eliminate a Republican seat.
However, the high court (with now retired Justice Anthony Kennedy casting the swing vote) decided that the cases lacked standing, and that each individual district would need to handle its own suit rather than a statewide one.
Although this would seem a break for Republicans, the failure to resolve the issue—instead punting it back to the state level—ultimately empowered attorneys like Elias to take advantage of more favorable situations, such as the liberal-friendly Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
North Carolina’s Congressional districts/IMAGE: USA Today via Youtube
Elias took up cases in Virginia and North Carolina (which had a long history of challenging districts in the courts), joining other suits to argue that the existing districts were racist.
Working with state-level officials, some of whom he previously had helped install through election recounts, he was able to circumvent the GOP-led legislatures using “sue till blue” litigation that was extremely costly to taxpayers and highly lucrative for the Perkins Coie law firm.
Although the legislatures continued to challenge the cases, with the litigation tied up before the midterm election, state-level Democrats were empowered to implement their own redrawn maps.
Of four closely watched races in Virginia where the GOP had incumbents, Democrats flipped three seats. In North Carolina, Republicans managed to fend off several traditionally red seats by minuscule margins but were forced to devote unprecedented resources to doing so as outside money flooded in from the Left.
The greatest impact, though, may have been in Pennsylvania, where Democrats managed to flip four districts in the area surrounding Philadelphia after the state Supreme Court forced a map redraw. (Republicans were able to flip one previously Democratic district as well.)
Even if Elias had no hands-on involvement, he was certainly watching with interest from the sidelines.
BREAKING: Pennsylvania Supreme Court strikes down congressional map. Orders new map in time for 2018 election. Since the case was decided under the State constitution, there is no route to SCOTUS. There will be a new, fair map for 2018.
Barring any new developments in court rulings, the impact of the Pennsylvania decision—as well as those in Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin and other potential battleground states targeted in the redistricting initiative—will most certainly be to upset the balance and turn once competitive states into a blue wall, effectively disfranchising voters in vast swaths of rural areas while disproportionately weighting the urban population.
Rather than rest on their laurels, though, the Left will not stop until it is in complete control. As liberal activist David Daley told left-skewing political website Vox, “The Democrats made some gains, but I’m not sure that they made enough gains to ensure that they have a reasonable voice in the process.”
