dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Anonymous ID: 1a5705 Oct. 29, 2024, 4:23 a.m. No.21853680 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>3686

Trump Ally Steve Bannon to Speak After Release From Prison

https://www.newsmax.com/us/prison-weaponization-political/2024/10/29/id/1185799/

Longtime Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon is scheduled to be released from prison Tuesday after serving a four-month sentence for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Bannon is set to leave the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, in the predawn hours and hold a news conference later in the day in Manhattan, his representatives said. He is also expected to resume his podcast Tuesday.

Bannon, 70, reported to the prison July 1 after the Supreme Court rejected his bid to delay the prison sentence while he appeals his conviction.

A jury found Bannon guilty in 2022 of two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to sit for a deposition with the Jan. 6 House Committee and a second for refusing to provide documents related to his involvement Trump's efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.

When he began serving his sentence in July, Bannon called himself a "political prisoner."

"I am proud of going to prison," he said at the time, adding that he was standing up Attorney General Merrick Garland and a "corrupt" Justice Department.

Trump, a Republican, is seeking to regain the presidency in next week's election against Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris.

A federal appeals court panel upheld Bannon's convictions in May. Bannon is now asking the full appeals court to hear his case. His legal team had argued that the congressional subpoena was invalid because Trump had asserted executive privilege. Prosecutors, though, say Bannon had left the White House years before and Trump had never invoked executive privilege in front of the committee.

Bannon faces additional criminal charges in New York state court, alleging he duped donors who gave money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other charges. A trial in that case is scheduled to begin in December.

Anonymous ID: 1a5705 Oct. 29, 2024, 4:25 a.m. No.21853687 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>3691

He actually said that!?

Jeff Bezos: Endorsements 'Create Perception of Bias'

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/jeff-bezos-column-wash-post/2024/10/28/id/1185775/

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos broke his silence over the newspaper's endorsement row that has dominated media platforms for the past three days and led to mass resignations at the paper, writing in an opinion piece Monday night that he was at least in on the decision and wishes he had done it sooner.

In a column titled "The hard truth: Americans don't trust the news media," Bezos, also the founder of Amazon, wrote that he nixed the newspaper's endorsement of Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris because endorsements don't matter anymore, save for a "perception of bias."

"Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, 'I'm going with Newspaper A's endorsement.' None," Bezos wrote. "What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one."

Bezos' column buttresses what Post Publisher William Lewis said in his column Friday, that it was a ubiquitous "we" at the Post who made the decision to nix endorsements. Lewis told CNN that reporting of Bezos himself pulling the plug was "inaccurate."

"I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy," Bezos wrote Monday.

Bezos also pushed back on assertions, made by erstwhile Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who was one of the first editors to resign Friday, that Bezos' decision to kill the endorsement was part of a quid pro quo with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

"Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people," Kagan told the Daily Beast. "Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo."

Bezos said that's not true, adding he wasn't aware of a meeting between his Blue Origin chief executive and Trump "on the day of our announcement."

"I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision," Bezos wrote. "There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false."

Speculation ran rampant in 2019 that Trump awarded a $10 billion defense cloud computing contract to Microsoft over Amazon over Trump's perceived treatment from the Washington Post, which endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020.

"All Trump has to do is threaten the corporate chiefs who run these organizations with real financial loss, and they will bend the knee," Kagan told The Daily Beast. Former Post editor Marty Baron said the same thing, telling CNN that Bezos' "commercial interests" were behind the decision.

"When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post," Bezos wrote. "I once wrote that The Post is a 'complexifier' for me. It is, but it turns out I'm also a complexifier for The Post.

"You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up," he added.

Bezos also acknowledged that papers like the Post and The New York Times suffer from a credibility problem.

"The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves," he wrote.

"While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight," Bezos wrote.

They rigging it hard in NV.

Nevada Supreme Court Allows Unmarked Ballots to Count in 2024

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/nevada-supreme-court-ballot/2024/10/28/id/1185754/

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Monday to uphold a lower court's decisionpermitting mail-in ballots lacking a postmarkto be counted if they arrive up to three days after Election Day, dismissing a GOP-led challenge in a high-stakes decision for the upcoming election, The Hill reported.

This ruling follows the court's affirmation of a lower court decision rejecting a Republican-led challenge to the current ballot-counting law.

The high court's majority opinion clarified that state law, which mandates counting mail-in ballots when a postmark is illegible or "cannot be determined," also applies to ballots without a postmark.

This interpretation directly counters the GOP's argument that the rule should exclusively cover ballots with smudged or unreadable postmarks.

"If a voter properly and timely casts their vote by mailing their ballot before or on the day of the election, and through a post office omission the ballot is not postmarked, it would go against public policy to discount that properly cast vote," the court wrote in its majority opinion.

The high court added that distinguishing between unmarked ballots and those with illegible postmarks would be unprincipled, as the postmark date cannot be confirmed in both cases.

The court also addressed the broader GOP concerns regarding election security and voter fraud. In affirming the district court's ruling, the high court held that the Republican plaintiffs failed to provide sufficient evidence that counting unmarked ballots would increase the likelihood of fraud or compromise election security. Furthermore, the court dismissed claims of any partisan bias in processing mail-in ballots, rejecting the argument that such ballots would disproportionately benefit Democratic candidates.

The ruling was largely unified, with five justices joining the majority opinion.

Two other justices agreed with the outcome but offered separate opinions. One noted the plaintiffs' lack of evidence, while the other emphasized that modifying election rules so close to Election Day would not serve the public interest.

Nevada is considered a critical battleground state, with polling averages indicating a tight race. According to recent data from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ, former President Donald Trump holds a slim lead over Vice President Kamala Harris, with 48.1% support to her 47.2%.