New recordings of Trump from Georgia may have just given prosecutors the racketeering proof they needed
March 10, 2021
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Wisconsin Republicans have sued Green Bay's mayor over microphones at city hall in an ongoing fight over the 2020 election lost by Donald Trump.
Election deniers have been pestering city officials, postal workers and others they believe were involved in a conspiracy to defraud the former president, and a local attorney who faced criminal charges for accosting a voter has sued the city over additional security measures put into place in response to those activities, reported Wisconsin Examiner.
“I think deliberately that escalation is meant to dissuade people from the polls,” said city clerk Celestine Jeffreys. “That is what this is all about. Everyone should be upset about that. When those people who are dissuading, policing, scrutinizing, they think they’re only scrutinizing people they don’t want at the polls. When in fact you scrutinize all people from the polls.”
Officials upgraded the security system at city hall to include audio recordings in response to ongoing confrontations with election deniers, including attorney Janet Angus, who was charged with disorderly conduct over an Election Day 2020 incident and joined a lawsuit filed by Republicans against Green Bay's Democratic mayor.
READ MORE: GOP's James Comer: I felt like my constituents were 'rooting for the rioters' on January 6th
“Ironic would be the word for that,” said Mayor Eric Genrich, who said other local governments and public transit systems use audio recordings to enhance security. “What prompted this installation were the bad behaviors of a small number of individuals that were threatening and harassing city staff and members of the media.”
The lawsuit alleges the recordings violate Wisconsin statutes requiring consent by at least one party to record conversations because not everyone is aware of the security devices, but even the judge overseeing the case suspects the complaint is politically motivated.
“I’m concerned that there was some type of underhandedness or strategy in waiting until after the city primary and before the city election to dirty up the mayor — and that’s unfortunate,” said Brown County Judge Marc Hammer, after issuing a temporary injunction against the use of audio recording at city hall. “That’s extremely disappointing, quite frankly, to use a fundamental right that our people have as a political tool.”
The Wisconsin Senate, state Sen. Andre Jacque (R-WI) and some local Republicans filed the suit, and everyone involved has financial or political ties to Chad Weininger, a Brown County official running against Genrich.
“Just about everybody involved in this legal action is either politically or financially connected to my opponent,” Genrich said. “So it’s pretty obvious what the motivation is here, that’s something Judge Hammer also pointed out. The people bringing this suit were aware of this system going back to fall of 2022, and waited to do anything about it until we were very close to the spring general election, so it’s pretty clear that this is a politically motivated action brought about by far right political interests who have been attacking the city of Green Bay for now over two years.”
“It’s mind-blowing to me that this is going on,” he added. “The Wisconsin state Senate is a legislative body, obviously. They’re not there to bring lawsuits against local governments and waste taxpayer dollars."
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Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is being sued by French language purists for only translating its signs into English.
The group has already succeeded in forcing the Eiffel Tower to add Spanish to its information signs alongside English and French.
The Association for the Defence of the French Language claims that only translating signs into English helps increase the international dominance of that language.
It has French law on its side -- an oft-ignored 1994 regulation requires all public buildings to translate all their signs and information into at least two languages.
The association filed a complaint against Notre-Dame with a Paris court on Monday, demanding the change.
It says the Eiffel Tower agreed in November to add Spanish after it threatened similar legal action.
Many of the panels explaining the ongoing reconstruction of Notre-Dame following a devastating fire in 2019 are written in French and English.
"If there is a foreign language, it is always Anglo-American," bemoaned the association's spokesman Louis Maisonneuve (speaking, of course, in French).
He insisted on differentiating "Anglo-American" from English, and says it is always the first choice of French authorities -- for instance in the use of "downtown" instead of "city centre".
"The law protects French because it promotes linguistic pluralism," Maisonneuve said.
The association is targeting 20 other public bodies, including the national post office over the name of its banking service, "Ma French Bank".
© Agence France-Presse
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This October, Rolling Stone published an exclusive report detailing an FBI raid on a prominent journalist's home which was followed by the journalist's disappearance from public view. The target of the raid was ABC News producer James Gordon Meek.
"Meek has been charged with no crime. But independent observers believe the raid is among the first — and quite possibly, the first — to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration," wrote Rolling Stone's Tatiana Siegel.
But behind the scenes at the outlet, Siegel was outraged at how the story was edited. According to a report from NPR this Tuesday, Siegel accused Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman of omitting her findings that Meek was part of a federal investigation into images of child sex abuse.
"The raid on Meek's apartment occurred in April but did not become public knowledge. In September, Siegel learned details of the raid from Meek's neighbors, yet she felt the story was languishing. At a staff meeting late that month, Shachtman asked her what she was working on. She reminded him," reported NPR's David Folkenflik. "The next week, Shachtman stepped in to edit Siegel's story. It was rare for him to do so for her work."
READ MORE: 'More legal trouble for Fox News': Details of explosive new revelations rock the network
Siegel reportedly informed Shachtman about the seriousness of the accusations against Meek, but Shachtman shot her down, saying she shouldn't turn in a story with the words "child pornography" in it.
Enraged, Siegel accepted a position at a sister publication two months later.
"According to two people with knowledge, Mark S. Zaid, a Washington attorney who often handles national security matters and represents government whistleblowers, called Shachtman on Meek's behalf while Siegel was preparing her story. Zaid previously represented the Daily Beast on Freedom of Information Act cases while Shachtman was editor of the site," Folkenflik reports. "Zaid confirms that he called Shachtman, and he tells NPR that Meek was a longtime friend and client on Freedom of Information issues. Zaid says he was representing Meek on any possible prosecution or investigation of his potential possession of classified material."
Shachtman reportedly later told people that he was skeptical of Siegel's sourcing. Rolling Stone's parent company, Penske Media, told NPR in a statement that the authority to make such choices for Rolling Stone's coverage lies with Shachtman. "That was true in this case, as reflected in the final edits to the story," the company said. "Some material was added late in the process, other material was dropped."
Shachtman reportedly took other steps that seemingly were intended to shield Meek from scrutiny. He told photo staffers to come up with a generic photograph rather than a picture of Meek, saying, "let's not use a picture of the guy in question, james gordon meek."
"NEEDS PHOTO," he told staffers in an internal message. "something FBI-y, please."
In the hours leading up to publication, Folkenflik reports that "Shachtman changed Siegel's draft to remove all suggestions that the investigation was not related to Meek's reporting. He left in the finding that federal agents had allegedly found 'classified information' on Meek's devices."
Read the full report over at NPR.
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