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The past year has been the most arduous of our lives. The Covid-19 pandemic continues to be catastrophic not only to our health - mental and physical - but also to the stability of millions of people. For all of us independent news organizations, it’s no exception.
We’ve covered everything thrown at us this past year and will continue to do so with your support. We’ve always understood the importance of calling out corruption, regardless of political affiliation.
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John Oliver trashes Arizona’s 'pathetically desperate' election audit: 'We’ll be lucky if nobody gets hurt'
May 09, 2021
"Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver closed off the news week with a commentary on the absurd efforts by the Arizona Republican Party to "recount" the 2020 election votes in an effort to "find" discrepancies that could somehow prove that Donald Trump won the election.
"For the record, this recount is a total joke," said Oliver.
He explained that the company conducting the so-called audit, Cyber Ninjas, is doing so without security, expertise or attention to detail. Ballots have been left unattended, untrained workers used different rules to count the ballots, and at one point even allowed counters to use pens that could have enabled the counters to change the votes.
But Oliver's favorite thing to mock was that the Twitter account for the Maricopa County "audit" team attacked the Arizona secretary of state for making "baseless claimes" (sic).
"Which, doesn't exactly fill with confidence about their attention to detailes (sic)," Oliver said, mocking the typo.
There have already been multiple audits of the election count and no problems have been found, but, disturbingly, the GOP is convinced that if they count them, somehow they can change the outcome.
"It is genuinely insane to swoop into a county that, remember, has already done multiple audits of its election count finding no evidence of fraud with the attitude of, 'Ok, but what if we do it sh*tty this time?'" said Oliver.
One election supervisor was on hand, thoping to have some semblance of legitimacy to the so-called audit, but the reality, according to Oliver, is that it doesn't matter.
"The problem is though, that the people behind this recount aren't going to be convinced unless the results swing their way," he said. "We know this is true, because, again, there have already been multiple audits conducted in Maricopa County and they weren't convinced by the results."
Oliver also mocked Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and an awkward moment in a Texas hearing where it was revealed that the law included provisions that attempt to "protect the purity of the vote," a frequently used phrase by white supremacists during the Jim Crow era as they tried to block people of color from voting.
Oliver closed the segment saying that Arizona, in particular, is "playing a dangerous game, and things are probably only going to get more volatile."
He used California gubernatorial candidate John Cox to make an analogy after the Republican candidate brought a live bear to his campaign events.
"It's pathetically desperate and we'll all be lucky if nobody seriously gets hurt," he closed.
See the video below:
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Shocking story reveals how one Reno cop went rogue to cover up a previous marriage to his second wife
May 09, 2021
Sheriff's Sargent Dennis Carry is being charged with multiple felonies, but despite the best efforts from local news media, city officials have refused to comply with documents that are typically public. Nevada has its own version of the national Freedom of Information Act at the state level. Still, the city has rebuffed media efforts to uncover what the charges are against Carry.
This is Reno explained that they began seeking answers into Carry more than a year ago. Over and over again the Reno Police Department fought back. The information was also denied by the Reno City Attorney's Office, despite a 200-page affidavit by police department Detective Trenton Johnson being available to another public agency.
According to the report, it all began when detectives say Carry "was trying to show his second wife he was divorced from his first wife. Johnson's [affidavit] details why Carry is now facing the felony charges after more than two years of investigation" that revealed Carry flew to Las Vegas under a fake identity to mail fake divorce documents to himself from a fake legal firm.
According to the report from the site, Carry used that same "undercover identity to gain access to unsecured but confidential court files in the Second Judicial District Courthouse." In another incident, he issued a subpoena to AT&T and Charter/Spectrum to "monitor" the internet traffic of a suspect he believed was viewing pornography with minors. The suspect, however, never existed. He also used the undercover identity to ensure the Facebook page "Reno Cop Watch" couldn't have access to any public information about him or his activities online.
But what This is Reno found was that the "Reno Police and Sheriff's Office went to extraordinary lengths to deny access to information about Carry's case — even when that information was publicly available elsewhere."
Carry was even detailed a full year before he was actually charged with the felonies.
According to the report, Carry used several apps in an attempt to cover his activities, even after he was interviewed by police in Feb. 2019.
"Carry, rather than face discipline or an investigation from the Sheriff's Office, was allowed to retire months after being put on paid leave, even after it was discovered he used a spy cam to record his supervisor," as well as other Washo County Sheriff's Office staff and FBI agents."
Even more shocking is that his role at the WCSO is "murky." He was listed as the sergeant who investigated internet crimes for the sheriff's office cyber crime division.
The information was all available publicly, said This Is Reno, yet the sheriff's office still refused to provide it when requests were filed, under the guise that he's one of 40 undercover officers whose information is hidden from the public for the WCSO. State rules dictate that all names and salary information of public employees be public, but undercover cops are exempt from the law.
"A detective carrying out an undercover assignment faces an increased risk of danger," said Sarah Johns, the sheriff's public information officer. "So, the State's Department of Motor Vehicles issues alternate driver's license to help protect the detective's wellbeing."
She wouldn't tell reporters how many officials get this kind of privacy for their positions, but public records request revealed there are 42, including "one captain, six sergeants, three lieutenants and 32 deputies."
Read the full shocking report at This Is Reno.
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Exposé reveals Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy was part of a plan cooked up in a Texas airplane hangar in 2018
May 09, 2021
Two years before the 2020 election, the conspiracy that Donald Trump won the election was part of a plot cooked up by a Texas Republican businessman, reported a Washington Post exposé.
In a shocking report, the Post revealed Russell J. Ramsland Jr. pitched an idea that "seemed rooted in evidence."
The theory was that "voting-machine audit logs — lines of codes and timestamps that document the machines' activities — contained indications of vote manipulation." There was just one problem, they didn't have a candidate to test the theory.
"We had to find the right candidate," said former Ramsland ally Laura Pressley. "We had to find one who knew they won."
The problem was that in 2020 most races were clear, even the presidential race. U.S. Rep Pete Sessions (R-TX) wanted nothing to do with it, nor did state Sen. Don Huffins (R). But Donald Trump didn't want to lose and he certainly didn't want to lose by the amount he did in 2020.
The meeting inside the airplane hanger had a "clandestine air," about it, the Post described. "Guests were asked to leave their cellphones outside before assembling in a windowless room. A member of Ramsland's team purporting to be a 'white-hat hacker' identified himself only by a code name."
"The enduring myth that the 2020 election was rigged was not one claim by one person," said the report. "It was many claims stacked one atop the other, repeated by a phalanx of Trump allies."
Indeed, it was a coordinated effort among many Trump allies and lawyers. They weren't perpetrated by experts or insiders, as the report explained, it was conservative activists and Trump pals who pushed a company called the Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG) to "find" the evidence "where none existed."
"Ramsland and others associated with ASOG played key roles in spreading the claims of fraud," said the Post. After fringe Republican Louie Gohmert was "briefed" by the ASOG he began promoting the conspiracies. Then they became part of Sidney "Kraken" Powell's lawsuits and Rudy Giuliani's efforts. Fox News has seized on the reports as well, hungry for Trump supporter ratings as the outgoing president attacked the network for calling Arizona for Biden on election night.
"During that period, Trump was hyper-focused on making the case that the election had been rigged," reported the Post, citing former White House aides. "He would listen to 'literally anyone' who had a theory about it, in the words of one former senior administration official."
The conspiracies took root and have grown extensively throughout the Republican Party. Despite their best efforts, judges, even Trump-appointed ones, haven't been willing to believe any of the ideas without evidence. Despite ASOG's best efforts, there is none, so it had to be created.
"ASOG's report claimed that audit logs for Dominion machines showed an alarming 68 percent 'error rate,'" said the Post. While that might sound astounding, when a University of Michigan computer science professor conducted an analysis, it was revealed the audit log was "meaningless."
Professor J. Alex Halderman, "who as part of the lawsuit examined the Antrim [County] results and the ASOG report at the request of the Michigan secretary of state and attorney general, wrote that audit logs record multiple lines for each ballot scanned and that many of those lines are 'benign warnings or errors' that have no bearing on the accuracy of the machines' count."
The example he gave was that ASOG was counting the warning "ballot has been reversed" to claim that votes were tampered with.
"But that entry means that a voter attempted to feed his ballot into the machine and the machine balked and spit it out — just as a vending machine often balks at a wrinkled dollar bill," said the report. Halderman's report explained that it happens "all the time."
ASOG then claimed that ballots were sent to electronic "adjudication" where officials manipulated them. Halderman's report found that Antrim County didn't even do an electronic adjudication. While ASOG may have found some security weaknesses, there was never any proof that the weaknesses were used by anyone to hack the election.
That is just one of the many revelations explained in the shocking Post report. Such conspiracy theories have been used to justify a slew of anti-voting laws across the country that make it more difficult for people voters to cast ballots. It's one of many reasons that Democrats at the federal level are pushing to pass a voting rights bill that can protect all voters equally.
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