BREAKING: Charleston, South Carolina Elects William Cogswell as Mayor – First Republican to Win Since 1877

by Mike LaChance Nov. 21, 2023

The city of Charleston, South Carolina has just elected a new mayor. William Cogswell has been elected as the first Republican mayor of the city since the 1800s, if you can believe it.

WCBD News reports:

William Cogswell elected mayor of Charleston

Voters in Charleston have chosen former State Representative William Cogswell to lead the city as its next mayor.

Unofficial results from the South Carolina Election Commission show Cogswell defeated incumbent John Tecklenburg, earning about 51 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s runoff election.

“The people have spoken and we’re ready, we’re ready for a new direction,” Cogswell said at his watch party in downtown Charleston shortly after declaring victory. “I am humbled by the results, no doubt. I am excited about the future of our city.”

The pair advanced to a runoff after neither earned enough votes to win outright in the Nov. 7 municipal election.

Tecklenburg, who was seeking his third term in office, conceded the race late Tuesday.

The last Republican mayor of Charleston was George I. Cunningham who left office in 1877.

Congratulations to Mayor-Elect Cogswell.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/11/breaking-charleston-south-carolina-elects-william-cogswell-as/

"Japs, Jewry And Trannies": Media Matters President's Bigoted Blogs Resurface Amid Spat With Musk

On Monday, Elon Musk's X sued Media Matters, claiming that the David Brock-founded leftist 'watchdog' group manipulated the platform to show major ads next to Nazi imagery, causing a flood of advertisers to leave the platform.

"The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers," causing "all but one of the companies featured in the Media Matters piece withdrawing all ads from X, including Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal, and IBM—some of X’s largest advertisers."

The move by Media Matters was a successful attempt to brand Elon Musk and his platform as antisemitic, after Musk took fire for agreeing with a post suggesting that liberal Jews - who "have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them," are now on the receiving end of things.

Japs, Jewry And Trannies

What happened next couldn't have been better scripted in pre-woke Hollywood. It turns out that Media Matters President Angelo Carusone wrote super antisemitic blog posts in the early 2000s, which were uncovered by the Daily Caller's Peter Hasson in 2019, and have been making the rounds of late given the Musk controversy.

In one blog post titled "Tranny Paradise," the future Media Matters president went on a lengthy diatribe against a 'tranny-loving author.'

In another post that same month, Carusone suggested in response to a male basketball coach's alleged sexual and physical abuse of female players; "lighten up Japs”

In an October 2005 post, Carusone said of his boyfriend, "despite his jewry, you KNOW he's adorable."

In another post, he suggested that his Jewish boyfriend only leaned conservative "as a result of his possession of several bags of Jewish gold."

We know, we know - who cares, right?

The point is that Carusone is a massive, virtue-signaling hypocritefor suggesting that Musk was antisemitic for agreeing with a defensible observation, while he himself broke several 'cardinal rules' of being a liberal wokescold.

As even the Washington Post noted at the time of the Caller article, "Carusone’s postings are indeed offensive, and if he’s going to serve as president of an organization renowned for unearthing overlooked and objectionable comments from people’s past, he deserves to be called out on his own transgressions."

Carusone said in reply, "It’s true: I wrote some gross things on my blog while I was in college. A few posts parodying living my life as if I were a self-loathing, bigoted Limbaugh right-winger."

Ah yes, just parody.

But wait, there's more!

Apparently a bunch of Media Matters employees hate Israel. The thing Media Matters is accusing Musk of. And hey, it's a free country - but the hypocrisy is just too thick to ignore.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/japs-jewery-and-trannies-media-matters-presidents-bigoted-blog-haunts-current-debate

What NATO learned in Ukraine

Apparently, they did not learn anything at all - straight out of the horse's mouth!

Nov. 21, 2023. ALEX KRAINER1/2

Last week I had the dubious privilege of attending a presentation by the former US Ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker. His talk was (mis)titled: "Russia's war on Ukraine: what have we learned?" which did elicit my interest. Volker is also the President of Alliance Strategic Advisors LLC and had a role as a Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. Interestingly, earlier in his career Walker had also worked for Britain’s Defence Minister, George Robinson.

But his presentation didn't really cover anything "they" learned from Russia's war on Ukraine. Instead, it was a rehash of all the talking points we have heard in the mainstream an infinite number of times: Ukraine must win, Russia bad, freedom, democracy, human rights and so forth. It sounded exactly like they did not learn anything at all.

Framing the thinking on Ukraine

Walker was probably the source of many of the western talking points on Ukraine and Russia. During the last six years of his involvement, he was "involved in trying to frame the thinking" about the project (words in quotations are Volker’s own formulations). A few weeks ago, Joe Biden stated that Ukraine successfully recaptured half of the territory it had initially lost to Russia and Walker said that same thing last night, which made me think that he may have "framed" that talking point as well.

As the news from Ukraine hasn’t been great lately, he warned against getting "bogged down in day-to-day news" about the war and that the mostimportant thing is that Ukraine “survived as a sovereign, independent European democracy.” Volker repeated that same phrase in italics several times during his talk.

He explained that Ukrainian forces are no longer trying to recapture lost territory, but are insteadfocusing on long-range precision strikes against Russian targets, since this is a capability in which Ukraine apparently has an advantage over Russia. Also, Russia is (still) running out of missiles and ammunition (it has been running out since at least March 2022) and is facing all sorts of challenges in Ukraine: the troops' morale is low, their leadership and command is poor, and their operations are shoddy. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are defending their homes and their freedoms so they are better motivated than the Russians.

The war must continue…

Indeed, Volker said thatUkraine has "the largest, best trained, best equipped, battle hardened army in Europe". Well, Ukraine did have the largest, best trained, best equipped army in Europe before February 2022. By today it's been almost completely destroyed and rather than battle hardened, it has now been battle ruined.

With regards to the future, Volker did say a few interesting things:

No normalization: the relationship between Russia and the West will not go back to normal after the war.

The war will continue: it must because, if Russia's imperial purposes were to succeed, this would be the signal to other despotic regimes that they could expand their territory at their neighbours' expense. For example, China might take Taiwan and therefore, "we must act," and "we all have a stake in this…" Continuing the funding for Ukraine project is a challenge due to US politics, but European Union will step up and drastically increase its aid for Ukraine.

Strategic pivot to the Black Sea: the west's strategic thinking is turning toward the general area of the Black Sea. Volker said it was an area that deserved attention and that no one in the West has thought in those terms before. NATO's priorities will include securing freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and ensuring safety of commercial vessels, cargos and their crews.

It's all about the model of governance: to my mind, this may have been the most important thing Volker said all evening, confirming what George Soros had said in 2021 while addressing the WEF gathering in Davos. Ultimately, the conflict unfolding in the world today is about "the nature of governance." Soros said it was open societies vs. closed societies. Volker framed it as a conflict between authoritarian regimes and democracies. The difference, according to him is that authoritarian regimes treat people as subjects while democracies treat them as citizens. It’s all about the people being able to change their leadership and the course of their nations' development. Ultimately, it’s down to our values.

https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/what-nato-learned-in-ukraine?

>>19958453

2/2

We are immensely fortunate in the west that the people in power are so fiercely determined to defend our right to remove them from power that they never hesitate to wage war against other nations to ensure those people have that same right, even at risk of nuclear armageddon. Such values!

Apart from its content, Volker's presentation was packed, well delivered and engaging. However, it all deteriorated during the Q&A session. I had raised my hand to ask a question immediately after his speech, but somehow ended up fourth in line for the microphone. He took three friendly questions to which gave very long, slow, rambling answers with many pauses that seemed like he was thinking what more he could toss into the word salad to drag it out as much as possible.

The question I didn’t get to ask

Because Prince Albert was also in the audience, and Volker was his guest in the Principality, I was not going to embarrass Volker with anything confrontational (I’m not keen on getting kicked out of Monaco), so I jotted down the following question for him:

Recently, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced that Germany would drastically increase her aid to Ukraine. Right after that we had a confirmation that Ukraine was responsible for the destruction of Nord Stream pipelines, which was very important industrial infrastructure for the German economy.Could this revelation jeopardize German support for Ukraine and if it does, what is the plan B?

Of course, nobody buys the Mickey Mouse story about Ukrainian pirates of the Baltic who blew up the Nord Stream, but I would have enjoyed pointing to the utter nonsense of its premise: that Germany accepted this account, lodged no diplomatic protest about it, and then decided to reward Ukraine by doubling its financial and military aid. It would have been even more enjoyable hearing what Volker would conjure up in response. Unfortunately, after he’d rambled through his answer to the third friendly question, the organizers ended the sessions and invited us to join the cocktail party instead, but I wasn’t able to stay.

Nord Stream and the crafting of history

Incidentally, the case of Nord Stream gas pipelines destruction is an important example of how history is being crafted in real time. Even after Seymour Hersh exposed the Mission Impossibleteam at the heart of Biden Administration as the culprits behind the attack. Not only did they have the opportunity, the means and the motive for the act, the impostor President even announced it at a press conference in February 2022, while standing next to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz!

Biden said that if Russia invaded Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it.” When a German journalist asked him to clarify how they would be able to do it, since it’s Germany’s infrastructure, Biden confirmed:

“We will, uh, I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”

So, why did the CIA invent the insultingly preposterous, unlikely story that it was all a Ukrainian plot and even that the US Central Intelligence Agency sternly warned the Ukrainians not to do it since that would be just so very bad and wrong!

Stuffing the respectable sources

The reason to run the embarrassingly unconvincing account in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and all the other “respectable” media of record is that in the near future, after the memory of all these events recede into the fog of time,court historians will duly recordthat, in their brave but desperate struggle for democracy and freedom,Ukrainians hit at Russia’s pipelines in the Baltic. They will cite articles written by respectable journalists, published at the time by the media of record. Alternatively, they might not even mention that there ever was such a thing as Nord Stream pipelines.

Meanwhile, all articles mentioning Seymour Hersh’s account will be duly scrubbed from the internet and dumped into the memory hole. Anyone who says that the US (and the UK, which Hersh forgets to mention) were behind the destruction of Nord Stream, will be dismissed as a conspiracy loon spreading hate speech and disinformation.

The old playbook won’t work this time

At any rate, that’s the MO of the way history has been crafted for us in the West for decades, perhaps centuries. However, the truth will not fade as easily this time. It is the victors who write history and the west is losing.After the war there will be trials in which the truth about Nord Streamwill emerge undeniable through legal discovery and the payback will be painful.

The Latest Filing In Kari Lake v. Katie Hobbs in Arizona

Maricopa is forced to admit it didn't properly certify the voting machines!

Emerald Robinson Nov. 21, 2023

Kari Lake has petitioned Arizona’s court system to transfer her case from the Appellate Court to the Supreme Court.

Maricopa County does not want that to happen — of course.

Here’s the entire document.

Maricopa’s election officials have admitted that required L&A testing on its 446 vote-center tabulators was not conducted.

That’s criminal.

Maricopa County has come to the end of the line — in terms of pretending that it ran a free and fair election.

“Specifically, Maricopa implicitly or affirmatively admitted it did not conduct its county L&A testing on its 446 vote-center tabulators on October 11, 2022 (the only announced day for statutory L&A testing) or after it replaced the memory cards 2 on its 446 vote-center tabulators, which violated A.R.S. §16-449(A) and the EPM.”

Oh.

Sure, Maricopa County didn’t actually test the voting machines properly but, hey, that’s no big deal — according to Maricopa County.

We’re now at the “yes, we don’t follow the law but it’s not really a problem!” stage of the official government cover-up.

What would Arizona’s Supreme Court make of this criminal fraud?

Would it decertify the election?

Elections have been overturned for much less.

https://www.scribd.com/document/686004209/Kari-Lake-s-Reply-in-Support-of-Petition-to-Transfer

https://www.emerald.tv/p/the-latest-filing-in-kari-lake-v?

Don’t be fooled. Media Matters isn’t telling corporations what to do.Corporations use Media Matters as an excuse to execute their WEF agenda. Freedom of speech is unacceptable to the globalist elite. If they can’t feed you non-stop propaganda on all channels they have lost.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) November 19, 2023

https://x.com/KimDotcom/status/1726320179188203781?s=20

Zelensky Cranks His ‘PR Counteroffensive’ Into Overdrive, Calls for the Killing of Putin, Says That Being Targeted for Assassination Is ‘Just Like Covid’

by Paul Serran Nov. 22, 2023

After the unmitigated disaster of the Summer Counteroffensive in the ground, and against the background of his covert struggle against Commander in Chief Valery Zaluzhny, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has launched a ‘PR counteroffensive’ of sorts.

The wartime leader is trying to put up a brave face, convince the world’s public opinion that he is control of things, and guarantee a continuation of the military and humanitarian support for his country.

In a new interview, Zelensky has ‘shrugged off’ what he called ‘repeated Russian attempts to assassinate him’, and assured the world that the will of Ukraine to defeat Vladimir Putin’s Russia remained strong. ‘We are ready to stand further’.

New York Post reported:

“Speaking at his fortress Kyiv headquarters, Zelensky admitted he had lost track of all the attempts to kill him since Russia unleashed a full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 last year. He said: “The first one is very interesting, when it is the first time, and after that it is just like COVID.

‘First of all, people don’t know what to do with it and it’s looking very scary. “And then after that, it is just intelligence just sharing with you detail that one more group came to Ukraine to [attempt] this’.

But when British and US officials offered to spirit the president out of the capital — amid fears it could fall within hours — he replied with the legendary line: ‘I need ammo, not a ride’.

Almost two years later, Zelensky said Russia still ‘wants very much’ to topple him from power.

[…] ‘Maybe it’s not by killing. I mean it’s changing. They will use any instruments they have’.”

Read more:

Once again, Zelensky denied what General Zaluzhny wrote, and what the whole world knows: the the Ukrainian offensive bogged down in a stalemate. He said: ‘In the morale, there is no stalemate’ – whatever that means.

“We are at our home. Russians are on our land. Therefore there is no stalemate in this. As regards the sky, there is no stalemate. Russians have more power in that. And really, how to move forward when you can’t control the sky?”

Ukrainians were weary of war, but have no appetite to sue for peace, since they ‘do not believe that Putin nor Russia, we do not believe that they want to finish the war’.

Newsweek reported:

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country has every right to kill his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin if the opportunity arises, if doing so would protect Ukraine and his people.

‘That’s war, and Ukraine has all the rights to defend our land’, the Ukrainian leader said when asked if Kyiv would take a chance to assassinate Putin if such an opportunity arose.”

The Kremlin downplayed Zelensky statements in their response.

“‘There have been verbal attempts on Putin’s life many times from Ukraine. At various levels. We are well aware of this. And they will not succeed in anything’, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

‘We have no doubt that all the goals and objectives of the special military operation will be achieved’, Peskov said.”

(Zelensky’s Desperation is getting to Crazy Level, he knows his days are done!)

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/11/zelensky-cranks-his-pr-counteroffensive-overdrive-calls-killing/

New York officials have escaped scrutiny for repeated failures to help homeless mentally ill people, a New York Times investigation has found.

By Amy Julia Harris and Jan RansomPhotographs by José A. Alvarado Jr.

For this article, Amy Julia Harris and Jan Ransom interviewed more than 250 homeless mentally ill people, care providers, lawyers and government officials and reviewed tens of thousands of pages of confidential medical records and other documents.

Nov. 20, 2023

The last breakdown of Marcus Gomez began in full view of the people whose job it was to stop it.

First, Mr. Gomez, a slight 45-year-old who was homeless and had long lived with schizophrenia, started hearing voices. Then he stripped off his clothes and stalked naked through the halls of his transitional housing program. Finally, according to his treatment notes, the voices overpowered him: They were telling him to kill the program’s staff.

Afraid for their safety, the program workers asked a nearby hospital, Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, to admit Mr. Gomez for inpatient care. Once stable, he might continue treatment, perhaps even find permanent housing.

But the hospital did not stabilize him. Instead, hours after receiving him in July 2018, it discharged him into the night. Still psychotic, he drifted across New York City to his grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx, seized a kitchen knife and, swinging wildly, set upon her home health aide, stabbing the 62-year-old caregiver in the head, chest, armpits, arms — 37 times in all.

“My mind made me do it,” Mr. Gomez told the police when they questioned him. The caregiver barely survived. Mr. Gomez went to jail.

Even in a city where encounters with unstable homeless people have become a part of daily life, the shocking act of violence that Mr. Gomez carried out was unusual. But the circumstances that allowed it to happen were not.

For years, the social safety net intended to help homeless, mentally ill people like Mr. Gomez — and keep them from unraveling violently — has failed in glaring and preventable ways. Yet rather than be held accountable, a New York Timesinvestigation has found, city and state agencies have repeated the same errors again and again, insulated from scrutiny by state laws that protect patient privacy but hide failings from public view.

. But before all that, the man who killed her had been hospitalized at a state psychiatric facility and released despite signs that he was still delusional — the same kind of institutional breakdown that has preceded scores of other attacks, The Times found.

The reporters scrutinized each case, conducting more than 250 interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of pages of confidential treatment records and visiting courthouses, jails, prisons and a psychiatric ward. The lack of public information about the incidents made it difficult to evaluate about a quarter of the cases. Still, the examination identified 94 instances in the past decade in which breakdowns of the city’s social safety net preceded the violence, sometimes by just days or hours.

The review focused on the major elements of that safety net — a disjointed patchwork of homeless shelters, hospitalsand specialized teams that was stitched together after the state began closing its notorious psychiatric institutions in the 1960s. It found a widespread failure by the agencies to share information, even though the state created a detailed database expressly for that purpose. It also revealed a pattern among the agencies of taking the narrowest possible approach to care, and an unwillingness on the part of city and state officials to fully fund crucial programs, leading to understaffing and harried treatment…

Next were the city’s private and public hospitals, which have regularly discharged people in severe psychiatric distress. Private hospitals, in particular, have cut psychiatric beds to boost their bottom line. Public hospitals have repeatedly erred while being overwhelmed by nearly 50,000 psychiatric patients per year. At least some of the discharges documented by The Times appeared to violate a federal law requiring hospitals to stabilize patients before releasing them.

A network of special treatment teams was supposed to be New York’s solution for caring for high-risk, mentally ill people on the streets, but more than a dozen cases identified by The Times occurred on the watch of such teams. The failures took place as the state has starved the teams of funding, leading providers to pay caseworkers low wages and saddle them with staggering caseloads. Some teams spent just 15 minutes per visit with patients — the minimum amount of time required to bill Medicaid for services…

Really long and detailed article…

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2023%2F11%2F20%2Fnyregion%2Fnyc-mental-illness-breakdowns.html

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

The media say X is placing Apple, IBM, and other ads near pro-Nazi content, but it's not. We tried various ways to replicate Media Matters' research and couldn't. The real goal of Media Matters isn't to fight antisemitism. It's to destroy X as a free speech platform.

Democrats' Need To Censor And Spread Disinformation Behind Media War On Elon Musk's X.

We could not replicate Media Matters' finding of corporate ads placed near neo-Nazi and white supremacist content

On Thursday, Media Matters For America published an article alleging that the social media platform X has been placing ads for major companies next to pro-Nazi content. “As X owner Elon Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” wrote Media Matters reporter Eric Hananoki, “his social media platform has been placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.”

In response, major companies, including Disney, Warner Bros, Comcast, IBM, and Apple, have pulled ads from X in a blow to the company’s revenue.

However, according to the X Safety team, Media Matters’ report was done by making a fake X account and then curating posts and ads to manipulate the account’s timeline. “These contrived experiences could be applied to any platform,” X argues.

X’s analytics suggest that Media Matters repeatedly refreshed the timeline of the account it created to cause X to generate ads near hateful posts. The account, X says, saw thirteen times the number of ads a median X user sees.

According to X, in at least one instance, the Media Matters author was the only user to see a specific ad placement. “Of the 5.5 billion ad impressions on X that day, less than 50 total ad impressions were served against all of the organic content featured in the Media Matters article,” X Safety wrote.

We should not blindly trust X’s defense of its ad policy. X obviously has a bias in how it measures its trust and safety. And so Public attempted to reproduce Media Matters’ methods to see if we found ads next to the content in question. We created an account and followed eleven of the neo-Nazi accounts in Media Matters’ report starting yesterday, November 19.

After refreshing both X’s “For You” page and “Following” page more than ten times and scrolling through the timeline each time, we did not observe ads next to white nationalist or pro-Nazi content.

We followed more extremist accounts and repeated this process after following thirty accounts. Still, we did not find ads on the timeline. We also opened each account’s page and did not observe ads there. Nor did we find ads under the replies to their posts.

Media Matters did not respond to our inquiry about the exact methods it used for its report.

It’s possible that Public’s methods did not exactly replicate Media Matters’ or that our account was too new to see ads. It’s also possible that X has already changed its ad policy in response to Media Matters, or there are fewer ads on the platform now that major advertisers have left.

In any case, both Public’s test and X’s analysis suggest that the ad incidents Media Matters found were very rare.

Despite the lack of verified evidence behind Media Matters’ claims, its tactics are highly effective. For companies, any association with racism or Nazi ideology is a major liability and they are easily swayed to pull advertising.

In 2020, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), along with other advocacy organizations, got hundreds of companies to boycott Facebook, leading the platform to remove content that groups that ADL disliked. In 2017, another advertiser boycott forced YouTube to ramp up its censorship.

And yet the head of Media Matters, Angelo Carusone, has himself made prejudicial remarks. He wrote, publicly, on a blog, that his boyfriend was “adorable… despite his jewry,” and that a friend leaned conservative “as a result of his possession of several bags of Jewish gold.” Carusone wrote “lighten up Japs” about the Japanese. And he wrote dismissively of “trannies.”

Carusone told the Washington Post, which rushed to his defense, “It’s true: I wrote some gross things on my blog while I was in college. A few posts parodying living my life as if I were a self-loathing, bigoted Limbaugh right-winger. And every time Media Matters takes some meaningful action, some awful people bring it up to try to stop us.

Left’s concerns with X have nothing to do with antisemitism and everything to do with its need to control the information voters receive.

What, then, is going on here, exactly? Why is Media Matters leading a disinformation campaign and advertiser boycott against Elon Musk’s X? Who is Media Matters, exactly?And what’s its real agenda?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1726671127840493811.html

Defender of the Republic 🇺🇸

New York ground zero 2.0? The government needs to stop playing w New York… I have a feeling these people won’t be pushed around much longer

https://t.co/1I9mta8KMh https://t.co/cAqRnV90ru

https://x.com/realdefender45/status/1727176358076493950?s=20

22 Nov, 2023 13:40

Telecom company with Mike Pompeo on board likely to be seized – senior Ukrainian official

The co-owner of Kyivstar, Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, has been sanctioned by Kiev

Kiev is still planning to seize the country’s largest mobile service provider, Kyivstar, a senior Ukrainian government official has said. Former CIA director and US secretary of state Mike Pompeo is on the company’s board of directors.

The mobile carrier is owned by the Dutch-headquartered telecom giant Veon, in which a majority share is held by LetterOne, a company co-founded by a group of Russian businessmen sanctioned by Kiev. There is an ongoing legal battle in Ukraine for the assets of Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven and Andrey Kosogov, including part of Kyivstar.

Rostislav Shurman, the point man for economy in the office of President Vladimir Zelensky, said the probability of Kyivstar being seized by the government was “high” when asked about the firm by the Ekonomicheskaya Pravda business news website.

“Relevant services are now studying the present legal situation,” he said, but declined to predict whether the entire company or just the part owned by LetterOne would be affected.

Last month, a court in Kiev arrested 99.9% of Kyivstar at the request of the Prosecutor General’s office. A week later, the order was amended to limit the arrest to just 47.85% of the firm, with the court blaming a “typo” in the government’s original request.

The part of the interview with Shurman in which Kyivstar was mentioned related to a program that he oversees for the privatization of confiscated property.

Veon announced that Mike Pompeo was joining Kyivstar as “an independent non-executive director” last week. He was a member of the US House of Representatives before becoming a prominent member in the administration of President Donald Trump – first as a spy chief and later as the country’s top diplomat.

Pompeo has no background in telecommunications, but used to co-own an aerospace firm in the US and later headed an oil equipment manufacturer before pursuing a political career.

In May 2022, Kiev created a legal framework for nationalizing the assets of people whom it considers to be enemies of the state. Mikhail Fridman has been on its list of sanctioned individuals since October last year, but the Ukrainian government has reportedly hesitated to seize Kyivstar due to its large market share and the presence of Western investors among Veon’s owners.

The Veon announcement also declared its full withdrawal from the Russian market. The company has business interests in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, in addition to Ukraine.

https://www.rt.com/russia/587790-kyivstar-seizure-ukraine-shurman/

22 Nov, 2023 13:43

60% of Americans believe Joe Biden helped son’s businesses – poll

Hunter Biden is accused of soliciting tens of millions of dollars from foreign clients for access to his father

Some 60% of Americans think that President Joe Biden “helped and participated in” his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings, according to a Harvard/Harris poll published on Monday. Republican lawmakers are currently investigating Biden’s alleged influence-peddling, and will soon decide whether to impeach the president.

According to the survey,81% of Republicans, 39% of Democrats, and 59% of independentvoters agreed that “Joe Biden helped and participated in Hunter Biden's business.”

The president and his son both scored low favorability ratings in the survey, with 55% of respondents having an “unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” view of Hunter Biden, and 48% holding the same view of his father.

Reports of President Biden’s involvement in his son’s dealings first surfaced before the 2020 election, when the New York Post published files from Hunter’s laptop suggesting that businesspeople from China, Ukraine, Russia, and other countries, paid Hunter for access to his father during the elder Biden’s time as vice-president of the US.

Hunter’s former business partner, Devon Archer, told a Congressional hearing in July that Hunter’s position on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm, was given to him solely to guarantee that the company would have influence over US policy. Archer also alleged that Joe Biden dined multiple times with Hunter’s clients, and that Hunter received money transfers immediately after at least two of these meetings.

https://www.rt.com/news/587797-joe-biden-hunter-poll/

Donald Trump Can Stop All His Trials in One Fell Swoop

Sean O'DriscollNov 22, 2023

Donald Trump may be able to halt all his criminal and civil trials if elected president, a legal expert has said.

Paul Golden, a partner at New York law firm Coffey Modica, told Newsweek that the Supreme Court has left a pathway open for a president to claim that court proceedings would interfere with his work. In addition, the Justice Department has concluded that criminal trials against a sitting president would be unconstitutional, Golden added.

Trump, frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, faces a total of 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges, claiming to be the victim of political "persecution" and "election interference." He is also involved in several civil lawsuits in which he denies wrongdoing.

In 1997, then Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer suggested presidents may be able to halt civil lawsuits if they claim that it interferes with their work. That was in the landmark decision in a sexual harassment case taken by Arkansas state worker, Paula Jones, against the then president, Bill Clinton.

"In a concurring opinion, Breyer noted that if the President could set forth and explain a conflict between a judicial proceeding and his or her ability to perform public duties, the President might be entitled to a postponement," Golden said.

In his decision, Breyer said that the Constitution does not automatically grant the president immunity from civil lawsuits based upon his private conduct. However, Breyer added "once the President sets forth and explains a conflict between judicial proceedings and public duties, the matter changes."

"At that point, the Constitution permits a judge to schedule a trial in an ordinary civil damages action…only within the constraints of aconstitutional principle—a principle that forbids a federal judge in such a case to interfere with the President's discharge of his public duties."

Golden said this principle could be applied to both civil and criminal trials.

"One of many strategies a sitting president could use, therefore, would be to file a motion in the context of the state case, arguing that allowing a criminal case to continue would affect the president's ability to run the country.But there are a host of other potential strategies available as well."

Golden said that the Justice Department has concluded that it would be unconstitutional to take a federal criminal case against a sitting president, but legal opinion is divided.

"It is unclear how the criminal trial would be handled if, in the middle of the trial, Mr. Trump were re-elected president. Although the Department of Justice has concluded that criminal prosecution of a sitting president would be unconstitutional, its memos on the topic do not have the force of law until and unless a court adopts them. Even then, one court might not be bound by another court," Golden noted.

The former president is currently embroiled in numerous criminal and civil cases. He is trying to delay two federal trials—one for allegedly hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the other for allegedly tampering with the 2020 presidential election result.

He is also facing a separate 2020 election tampering case in Georgia and a fourth criminal case in New York over alleged hush money payments to adult film actress, Stormy Daniels. He is also facing a defamation lawsuit by retired New York journalist E. Jean Carroll.

A jury previously awarded Carroll $5 million against Trump for sexual assault and defamation and she is suing him again for comments made after that jury award. In addition, he is currently on trial in the New York attorney general's lawsuit against him for fraudulent asset evaluations.

Last month, a Trump lawyer was allowed to phone in to one of Trump's classified documents pre-trial hearings because he was also representing Trump in the New York attorney general's case on the same day.

His attorneys have unsuccessfully sought postponement in both of Trump's trials until after the 2024 presidential election because of their work schedule.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-2024-election-court-cases-supreme-court-1845920

Fani Willis Tells Donald Trump Co-Defendant to 'Shut His Mouth' in Court

Nov 22, 2023 at 8:02 AM EST

Fani Willis told Donald Trump co-defendant Harrison Floyd to "shut his mouth" in court as ajudge rejected her motion to jail him over his social media posts.

Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, is leading the criminal racketeering case against Trump in Georgia over his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. She accused Floyd, a former leader of Black Voices for Trump who is facing three charges accusing him of being involved in a harassment campaign targeting Atlanta election worker Ruby Freeman, of intimidating witnessesthrough social media posts.

She said Floyd, who has pleaded not guilty, engaged in numerous intentional and flagrant violations of his bond agreement, which was agreed upon in August after he spent five days in jail and bars him from communicating directly or indirectly with or intimidating co-defendants or potential witnesses involved in the case.

"It is unfair to those witnesses," Willis said in court on Tuesday. "And there are real consequences for allowing defendants to intimidate witnesses."

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin reported that Willis also said: "I've stated on the record he can say whatever he'd like on any post he'd like about me.I have no value for what he says."

She continued: "And I'm threatened every day anyway so that he posts and I get threatened some more, that'll be what it is. I've learned to live with that and I am a public official, and voters elected me here, and I've put myself in this position.

"That does not give him the right to contact co-defendants or intimidate other witnesses. And quite frankly, it's really in the defendant's interest to shut his mouth about this case because it can and will be used against him."

(Why can’t he speak to co-defendants?Her arrogance will take her down)

https://www.newsweek.com/fani-willis-harrison-floyd-trump-georgia-case-social-media-1845996

MAGA Enraged at Report Air Force Warned Against Attending Pro-Trump Rally

Nov 21, 2023 at 4:14 PM EST

Conservatives and supporters of the MAGAmovement were angered on Tuesday in response to a report that Air Force members in North Dakota were advised to avoid attending a pro-Trump rally.

The criticism from conservatives comes as many have continued to take aim at the U.S. Department of Defense. Senator Tommy Tuberville has previously vowed to block Defense Department nominations over his opposition to abortion policies.House Republicans also recently voted to reduce Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's salary.

"Leadership at Air Force base in North Dakota warns airmen not to attend rallyfeaturing Turning Point Action's Tyler Boweror risk 'jeopardizing' military career," Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA, said on X, formerly Twitter. "The DoD has declared WAR on conservatives. Congress should immediately investigate this absurd, unhinged threat."

On Tuesday, Fox News reported that members of the U.S. Air Force at the Minot Air Base in North Dakota received a text regarding the Dakota Patriot Rally which is being hosted by Turning Point USA on November 17.

"Leaders, please exercise caution if downtown this weekend," the text obtained by Fox News said. "We just got word of an event going at the fairgrounds downtown called Dakota Patriot Rally. It's guest speaker is from an alt-right organization called Turning Point Action."

"Additionally, please remind them that participation with groups such as Turning Point Action could jeopardize their continued service in the US military," the text added, according to Fox News.(WTF???)

Turning Point's Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer was planned as a speaker for the event that was mentioned in the text. Kirk also shared the text on X, prompting an array of criticism from many conservatives and MAGA supporters.

"Unbelievable - People need to wake up to the fact that the radical left has fully taken over our military leadership. Republicans in Congress should immediately investigate this blatant discrimination against conservatives. Enough is enough!!!!" Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X.

Republican Representative Eli Crane wrote, "Unfortunately this is not surprising in these times. For those who have been to Turning Point event, this isexactly the type of event that members of our armed services should be attending. They always promote patriotism, and the values this country is founded on."

Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance wrote, "Biden now threatening veterans for attending rallies with TPUSA. Notably if a veteran posts a viral video with a lefty group nothing happens.Disgraceful. And drives home Senator Tuberville's point that Biden is using the military for politics."

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn said, "Enough with the political weaponization and wokeness of our military."

Similarly, Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz said, "Whoever thought sending this message out was a good ideais definitely gonna be answering questions under oath in the Armed Services Committee."

(I thought this was a joke when I read it on RRN)

https://www.newsweek.com/maga-air-force-warning-pro-trump-rally-turning-point-usa-1845805

Legal Analysts React After Judge Finds Trump 'Engaged in an Insurrection'

Thomas KikaNov 18, 2023

A Colorado judge's ruling on Friday that Donald Trump committed an insurrection against the United States Constitution has prompted a flurry of reactions from legal experts.

On Friday, District Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled on such a challenge in Colorado, giving the former president both a win and a rebuke at the same time. While Wallace, who was appointed by the state's Democratic Governor Jared Polis, ruled that Trump could remain on the state's ballot, she also concluded that he "engaged in an insurrection" due to his actions in the wake of the 2020 election, giving fuel to a potential appeal against her decision.

In response to an inquiry from Newsweek on Saturday, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung provided an official statement celebrating the dismissal of the ballot challenge, while not touching on Wallace's ruling that Trump incited an insurrection.

"We applaud today's ruling in Colorado, which is another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges," Cheung's statement read. "With this decision, Democrats' 14th Amendment challenges have now been defeated in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, the judge's ruling prompted several reactions from various legal experts on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, with the likes of formerJudge J. Michael Luttig taking issue with Wallace's logic statingthat the president is not an "officer of the United States."

"It is unfathomable as a matter of constitutional interpretation that the Presidency of the United States is not an 'office under the United States,'" Luttig, an adviser to Trump's former Vice President Mike Pence, wrote Friday. "It is even more constitutionally unfathomable, if that's possible, that the former president did not take an oath 'to support the Constitution of the United States' within the meaning of Section 3 when he took the presidential oath 'to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.'"

Later he added: "The Constitution is not a suicide pact with America's democracy. Indeed, it is the very contrary in this instance. It is plain that the entire purpose of Section 3, confirmed by its literal text, is to disqualify any person who, having taken an oath to support the Constitution, engages in an insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution. The former president did exactly that when he attempted to overturn the 2020 election and remain in office in rebellious violation of the Constitution's Executive Vesting Clause, which prescribes the four-year term of the presidency."

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard University, took a similar issue with Wallace's ruling.

"Judge Wallace held thatanyone but a former president who did what she found Trump did— take an oath to the Constitution and then break that oath by engaging in a violent insurrection — could never again run for any public office," Tribe wrote on X on Saturday. "So much for nobody being above the law!"

"You mean you think it seems odd that the drafters of the 14th Amendment would have decided that an insurrectionist should hold no federal office other than the presidency?" George Conway, a lawyer and outspoken conservative critic of Trump, wrote in response to Tribe. "Or that the president is not an 'officer' of the United States under a Constitution that explicitly refers to the presidency as an 'office'?"

"While I am a critic of Trump's speech and actions on that day, I still believe that the court is completely wrong on the First Amendment," conservative legal analyst Jonathan Turley wrote on Saturday on his website. "It is common for political leaders to call for protests at the federal or state capitols when controversial legislation or actions are being taken. Indeed, in past elections, Democratic members also protested elections and challenged electoral votes in Congress."

He continued: "The fact is that Trump never actually called for violence or a riot. Rather, he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to express opposition to the certification of electoral votes and to support the challenges being made by some members of Congress.He expressly told his followers 'to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.'"

Turley also cited Brandenburg v. Ohio, a 1969 ruling in which the Supreme Court ruled that incitements of violence are still protected by the First Amendment, "unless there is a threat of 'imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.'"

https://www.newsweek.com/legal-analysts-react-after-judge-finds-trump-engaged-insurrection-1844983