Saturday, December 5, 2020

JUDICIAL WATCH WEEKLY UPDATE 12/04/2020

 

President Trump Echoes Judicial Watch Concerns about Dirty Voter Rolls

 
In his forceful and comprehensive address to the nation this week on widespread election fraud, the president referred to the many dirty voter rolls across the country. Here’s what he said:

It’s a widely known fact that the voting rolls are packed with people who are not lawfully eligible to vote, including those who are deceased, have moved out of their state, and even our non-citizens of our country.

Beyond this, the records are riddled with errors, wrong addresses, duplicate entries, and many other issues. This is not disputed. It has never been disputed. Dozens of counties in the key swing states have more registered voters on the rolls than they have voting age citizens, including 67 counties in Michigan. All of this is evidence.

In Wisconsin, the state’s Board of Elections could not confirm the residency of more than 100,000 people, but repeatedly refused to remove those names from its voter rolls before the election. They knew why, nobody else did. I knew why. They were illegal voters. It is a travesty that in the year 2020, we do not have any means of verifying the eligibility of those who cast ballots in an election and such an important election it is, or determining who they are, whether they live in the state or whether they’re even American citizens. We have no idea. 

[You can watch his speech here. And here is a transcript.]

You might have recognized his concerns about dirty voting rolls because Judicial Watch in October reported that our September 2020 study revealed 353 U.S. counties with 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens. In other words, the registration rates of those counties exceeded 100% of eligible voters. The study found eight states showing statewide registration rates exceeding 100%: Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

I’ve repeatedly said that dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections. That’s why we’ve filed three federal lawsuits to clean up the voter rolls in Pennsylvania (which our lawsuit alleges has over 800,000 extra names on the rolls), North Carolina and Colorado.

Our expert team of election lawyers and investigators is also on top of the current election crisis. For example, we have dozens of open record requests in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada – to start.

The Left changed how our elections were conducted – and it resulted in a tsunami of mail-in ballots that the evidence increasingly shows were unlawfully handled and counted in a way at that is at odds with the law. The structural integrity of the elections in key states fell under leftist machinations – raising serious question about the validity of reported results for Joe Biden. 

There is strong evidence, incontrovertible is some instances, that virtually every “battleground” state's laws were violated in the handling and counting of mail-in ballots. It is an open question whether the courts will enforce the rule of law. But under our Constitution, the state legislatures and Congress can and must act through the Electoral College process. Accordingly, I encourage you to contact your state legislatures (especially if you live in states where the election is under dispute) and Congress to let your elected representatives know what you think about the current election crisis.

President Trump, as president, has a constitutional duty to enforce the rule of law on election issues. And as the DOJ is seemingly again AWOL, it will be up to Judicial Watch and other independent activists and citizens like you to ensure that our elections are secure and that the lawful winner is our nation’s next president.


Records Show Obama DHS Scanned Georgia Election Site in 2016

There is a raging debate about the security of our election systems. Judicial Watch released documents this week that show, when it comes to election security, the Obama administration may have been part of the problem.

We received 243 pages of records from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that show the Obama administration’s scanning of the election systems of Georgia, Alaska, Oregon, Kentucky and West Virginia in 2016. This activity prompted a letter from then-Georgia Secretary of State (now Governor) Brian Kemp to then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson accusing DHS of, “an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the Georgia Secretary of State’s firewall.”

The records were produced in response to our FOIA request for all records related to reported cyberattacks against the Georgia secretary of state’s information network involving DHS, including investigative reports, memoranda, correspondence and communications between October 1, 2016, and February 14, 2017.

The minutes of a DHS “Enterprise Security Operations Center” (ESOC) meeting indicate that on November 15, 2016, at 8:43 a.m. a “scanning event” occurred. The “‘scanning’ event was the result of a FLETC [Federal Law Enforcement Training Center] user’s Microsoft Office Discovery Protocol sending a packet with the OPTIONS flag to the Secretary of State of Georgia site.”

The minutes note that the ESOC “has received requests from NCCIC [DHS’s The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center] and MS-ISAC [Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center] to investigate other states that have seen ‘suspicious’ activity.”

The minutes note that Kemp accused DHS of conducting illicit scans on at least February 2, February 28 and May 23, 2016, as well.

DHS notes in the minutes that they were working with Microsoft to determine what happened: “Microsoft and the ESOC with the assistance of FLETC, were able to confirm that the user non-maliciously copied and pasted elements of the website to an excel document, which triggered the HTTP ‘OPTIONS’ request.”

A “Microsoft E-Mail Statement (Unofficial Statement to ESOC)” was included with the minutes. The email stated, “After looking at the data I do not see requests that look malicious in nature or appear to be attempting to exploit a vulnerability.”

chart of “Current Open Vulnerabilities” for the period November 30, 2016, through December 12, 2016, noted that DHS had identified a total of 1,227 cyber vulnerabilities within DHS components, including five “High” severity ones at FEMA.

In a “Shift Pass Down Report – Sunday Night Shift – December 18, 2016” describing one of the State of Georgia incidents, DHS identifies that it originated, “from a FLETC-based Physical Security Contract Manager.”

DHS identifies activity originating from them in Alaska, Oregon, Kentucky and West Virginia.

In a “State of Alaska update,” the report notes, “Confirmed this activity was a NPPD [DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate] employee investigating twitter reports of compromise on an AK Election System, as part of his normal duties.”

A “State of Oregon update,” indicated that “Oregon Secretary of State inquired why they observed the same DHS IP reported by GASOS visiting their website. After engaging with DHS, Oregon agreed there was nothing suspicious and closed the investigation.”

A “State of Kentucky update” said, “Normal web traffic from DHS.”

A “State of West Virginia update” also said “Normal web traffic from DHS.”

In a December, 16, 2016, email exchange between DHS officials regarding a “Preliminary update on GASOS [Georgia Secretary of State]” an official notes there were at least 10 other “timestamps” in which “we have identified different components who have caused the same traffic as the FLETC user.” The log lists incidents involving FEMA, ICE-CIS and FLETC occurring between Feb. 2, 2016 and Sept. 12, 2016.

The email sender adds, “At this time, we cannot validate users with ease for these past timestamps due to DHCP and the lack of Authentication logs.”

Acting Principal Deputy Chief Information Officer, Jeanne Etzel replies to him, “When this gets published in the 4:00, don’t say ‘lack of logs’ say something about logs are maintained for xx days and the events in question occurred xx days ago therefore our logs are overwritten per our standard retention policy.”

Another official, unidentified, then forwards the exchange to unknown officials saying, “FYI. Please use the lens of Press Release and senior leaders.”

In a December 9, 2016, email, Director of DHS Cybersecurity Operations, Boyden Rohmer emailed an unidentified Chief of the Justice Security Operations Center at the Justice Department about “some claims by the State of Georgia that we’ve been scanning their website,” noting that when he pulled their logs over a three hour period, “we see that we have about 1800 similar requests.”

In an email exchange on December 8, 2016, sent to a DHS official, from a CBP CSOC [Customs and Border Protection/Cyber Security Operations Center] official indicated that the same CBP IP address that scanned the Georgia Secretary of State election systems also “previously was reported to us by Princess Cruise Lines” but “ESOC [DHS’s Enterprise Security Operations Center] assesses that the CBP computer was just doing normal web browsing to Princess Cruise Lines.”

The email continues, “ESOC assesses that the CBP computer was just doing normal browsing to Georgia’s Secretary of State office on Nov 15 as well.”

The CBP cyber security official then asks the DHS ESOC official for clarification of certain questions, such as “In both instances, who made this assessment that all of this activity was just ‘normal browsing’?” and “Please define ‘normal browsing’ as it is referenced in the text highlighted above.”

In January 2017, the DHS Inspector General wrote to Kemp, saying that an investigation into his allegations was in progress and asking for web and network logs, as well as any other evidence that indicated the DHS attempted to breach Georgia’s system.

In July 2017, the DHS Inspector General reported to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform “that DHS employee interactions with the Georgia systems were limited to routine searches for publicly available information on the state’s public website and that none of the web pages visited were related to elections or voters.” And stated: “The investigation was conducted by employees in OIG’s specially trained Digital Forensics and Analysis Unit.”
What this all means is that the Obama DHS was caught scanning the Georgia Secretary of State’s website in 2016, and these documents show that details about the controversy may have been ‘overwritten.’

These documents also provide context for the current debate. The Obama-Biden Left that is now trying to convince Americans our election computer systems are secure seems to have breached these very systems when they last ran the government.


Three Congresswomen Star in Forum with Terror Financiers, Anti-Semites

Not two decades after 9/11 we have two radical members of Congress openly consorting with terrorists. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the disturbing details.

Congress should reprimand three of its members for participating with financiers of Islamic terrorism in a conference sponsored by an anti-Semitic group with deep ties to Hamas, the Palestinian extremist group that calls for eradicating the state of Israel. The legislators who joined forces with the extremists over the Thanksgiving weekend include Ilhan Omar and Betty McCollum of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. All are Democrats with a history of supporting anti-Semitism. Omar and Tlaib are the first two Muslim women in Congress and their tenure as elected officials has been marred with tremendous controversy.

The powwow they recently starred in was bankrolled by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a Virginia-based group that advocates for Palestinian rights and claims to educate the public about the just cause of Palestine. The lineup at the recent event read like a “who’s who for the Muslim Brotherhood,” according to a nonprofit dedicated to exposing the threat of radical Islam and other extremist ideologies. The respected Washington D.C.-based group, Clarion Project, published a poster advertising the conference, which featured an array of terror financiers and anti-Semites. They include Tarek Hammoud, who has well-documented connections to Hamas and Kifah Mustapha, a prolific fundraiser for radical Islamist groups with deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamoud is the executive director of the Palestinian Return Center (PRC), a Hamas front in the United Kingdom. PRC regularly hosts Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, a former prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority. Mustapha is the chairman of Muslim American Society Institute of Chicago (MAS) and was embroiled in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case, according to court documents. An imam at a Chicago-area mosque, Mustapha is a member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and was a Holy Land Foundation officer. The Holy Land Foundation is a Hamas front group prosecuted by the U.S. for funding terrorism. In 2008 five of the group’s leaders were convicted in Texas on 108 counts for funneling more than $12 million to Hamas. The government considered it the largest victory against terrorist financing since the 9/11 attacks. A year before the verdicts Judicial Watch published a special report on Muslim charities that includes alarming information about the Holy Land Foundation.

At the Thanksgiving weekend event, the three federal lawmakers rubbed elbows with an assortment of terrorist supporters and funders. AMP was founded in 2006 by a University of California, Berkeley professor, Hatem Bazian, who is an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activist. He also founded a group called Students for Justice in Palestine, whose members are notorious for intimidating and harassing Jewish and pro-Israel students on college campuses around the U.S. Bazian, who still operates AMP, has employed an array of terrorist financiers to help run his group, according to congressional documents obtained by the Clarion Project. At least five AMP officials previously served with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s pro-Hamas Palestine Committee. The Palestine Committee was a secret body set up to advance the Brotherhood/Hamas agenda in America. Bazian has proclaimed that Muslim-Americans must follow in the footsteps of the “uprising in Iraq,” which was against American soldiers, and the “intifada in Palestine” by starting an intifada in the U.S. that changes the country’s political dynamics.

After hobnobbing with allies of Islamic terrorists, one of the congresswomen took to social media to advance their cause. On the last day of the AMP conference Tlaib, who easily won reelection last month, promoted a message on her Twitter account that has long been reiterated by those calling for the complete destruction of the state of Israel and its Jewish citizens. It reads: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”


Until next week…


 
 
Contribute

 

No comments:

Post a Comment