This Jan. 6 Rioter Is Posting Death Threats Against the FBI “Fuck the FBI, hang the traitors.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyg8n/jan-6-rioter-fbi-threats
Wisconsin GOP candidate calls for ‘pitchforks and torches’ https://apnews.com/article/abortion...donald-trump-79e3632493fb8c30a1edeb5e53844992
Violent threats against lawmakers have Congress on edge https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3626478-violent-threats-against-lawmakers-have-congress-on-edge/
MAGA Republican groups go from attacking teachers and librarians to target children's hospitals: expert warns https://www.rawstory.com/maga-republican-threats/
Louie Gohmert gives a flag to anti-vax Covid-denier grifter who stormed the Capitol in order to further promote violence -- while claiming she was a "political prisoner". Republican congressman presents convicted January 6 rioter with flag flown over US Capitol after her release from prison https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/10/politics/louie-gohmert-january-6-simone-gold/index.html Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas presented an honorary American flag recently flown above the US Capitol to a convicted January 6 rioter after she was released from prison Friday. Gohmert, a Trump ally who has previously promoted debunked conspiracies about the January 6, 2021, insurrection, met Dr. Simone Gold upon her release from federal prison in Miami on Friday and gifted her a flag flown over the Capitol along with an official certificate. In a statement released Friday, Gohmert falsely claimed that Gold was “a political prisoner,” a term many supporters of former President Donald Trump have used to inaccurately describe the prosecution and incarceration of January 6 defendants. “Dr. Gold is the definition of what a political prisoner looks like – something I never thought I’d see here in the United States of America,” Gohmert said. Gold is a well-known Covid-19 conspiracy theorist who was sentenced to 60 days in prison in June for her involvement in the January 6 riot. She is the founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that received national attention for spreading false claims about Covid-19, pushing unproven treatments like hydroxychloroquine and later lying about the FDA-authorized vaccines. The day before January 6, Gold spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, DC, where she further promoted vaccine misinformation. The next day, she joined a group of rioters who forced their way past officers and breached the US Capitol. She later spoke through a megaphone to fellow rioters gathered in Statuary Hall. At her sentencing hearing in June, US District Judge Christopher Cooper chastised Gold for “leaving people with the misimpression that this is a political prosecution.” Cooper gave her the 60-day jail sentence after she pleaded guilty to entering restricted Capitol grounds, a low-level misdemeanor with a maximum potential sentence of one year behind bars. The statement released by Gohmert’s office Friday said he presented Gold with the flag “to celebrate her invaluable work and contributions to public health, medical freedom and our God-given constitutional rights.” The certificate presented with the flag said it was given “in honor of the beginning of the rest of (Gold’s) invaluable life … with great appreciation, admiration and awe,” according to photos of the flag presentation released on Gold’s Twitter account. Gohmert, who is leaving Congress when his term ends next year following an unsuccessful run for Texas attorney general, is one of the most vocal promoters of January 6 conspiracies. He is also part of a group of House Republicans that have rallied to the defense of some of the people charged in connection with the insurrection. “I am honored to receive this recognition from Congressman Gohmert, a true believer in freedom and a fierce defender of our constitutional rights,” Gold said via Twitter. The Architect of the Capitol, the office responsible for maintaining the grounds of the US Capitol, provides official flags flown over the Capitol to members of Congress upon request. The office “fulfills on average more than 100,000 flag requests” from lawmakers annually, according to its website. Gold is one of more than 125 Capitol rioters who have been sentenced to jail or prison after being convicted of crimes related to January 6. Nearly 875 people from across the country have been charged by the Justice Department.
Let's take a look at a typical Republican candidate in the modern era... GOP candidate repeatedly 'liked' photos of underage girls and joked about choking women https://www.rawstory.com/gop-candid...underage-girls-and-joked-about-choking-women/ Alek Skarlatos, a Republican candidate for Congress in a competitive Oregon district, repeatedly “liked” photos of underage girls in bikinis on Instagram and joked about strangling women on a podcast shortly before beginning his political career four years ago. Skarlatos, 29, is a former Oregon National Guardsman who parlayed his recognition for helping stop a terrorist on an Paris-bound train in 2015 into multiple reality show appearances and two previous unsuccessful campaigns for Congress and the Douglas County Commission. He faces Democrat Val Hoyle, the current commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries, in a race for Oregon’s 4th Congressional District, currently represented by Democrat Peter DeFazio. The district, which includes Eugene and most of southwest Oregon, is one of three targeted by both national political parties. Skarlatos’ comments about choking women were on a podcast in 2018 to promote a Clint Eastwood movie dramatization of the thwarted train attack. Skarlatos appeared as himself in the film. In March 2018, two months before Skarlatos launched his campaign for Douglas County Commission, he and film co-star Spencer Stone, a former Air Force staff sergeant who also helped stop the terrorist attack, appeared on the podcast “Drinkin’ Bros.” For 45 minutes, the pair and two podcast hosts discussed the film and speculated about celebrities’ sex lives, and Skarlatos read aloud some of his messages from the dating app Tinder. Then, the conversation turned to choking in the bedroom. “You ever thought if you choked someone and killed them in bed what would happen?” podcast host Ross Patterson asked. “Oh yeah,” Skarlatos responded, laughing. “Oh yeah.” The conversation about women dying during sex continued, with Stone saying he had plans to sit in on a trial of a man charged with choking his girlfriend to death during what the defendant described as a consensual encounter. Skarlatos then referred to a 2017 Florida case in which a man argued that his girlfriend accidentally suffocated while performing oral sex, saying that the man wasn’t convicted and “got off, in more ways than one.” Around the time of Skarlatos’s podcast appearance, the Oregon Legislature upgraded strangulation during domestic violence to a felony. Strangulation was also made a federal felony in the 2013 reauthorization of the federal Violence Against Women Act. Academic studies have found that more than half of female college students have been choked by partners during sex and have linked an increase in strangulation attempts to depictions of choking in pornographic videos that don’t show how dangerous it is. Earlier in the episode, Skarlatos also complained about the physical appearances of women in Roseburg, and how he had to travel elsewhere to date. “There’s literally two attractive women in my town,” Skarlatos said. Following a request for comment from the Capital Chronicle, Skarlatos apologized in a statement shared by his campaign. “Looking back at the comments I made as a 24-year-old who just left the Army, I’m disappointed,” he said. “I apologize if I offended anyone.” Within the past few months, Skarlatos has also “liked” photos of underage girls wearing bikinis and other skimpy outfits on Instagram. One such photo, posted by a then-17-year-old girl this past March, shows her in a string bikini bottom and a sweatshirt raised to display her midriff. Since 2020, Skarlatos liked dozens of photos of teenage girls, including several in which the girls are wearing two-piece bathing suits or midriff-baring crop tops. The two youngest girls were 15 at the time Skarlatos liked their pictures, according to Instagram posts they made on their birthdays. The Capital Chronicle reviewed screenshots of the posts and found them on Instagram to verify that Skarlatos liked them. He defended his Instagram likes in a statement. “To imply that a ‘follow’ or a ‘like’ of social media influencers on Instagram with over 100,000 followers is inappropriate is absurd,” Skarlatos said. Separately, the Associated Press reported Friday that Skarlatos was cleared by the Federal Election Commission of an alleged campaign finance violation relating to a nonprofit he created. Skarlatos used $93,000 left over from his 2020 campaign for Congress to create a nonprofit to advocate for veterans, then transferred $65,000 from the nonprofit to his current campaign after he decided to run again in 2021. The AP, citing a filing from the commission that’s not yet public, reported that the Federal Election Commission approved the transfer to his campaign as a refund. As of the end of the third fundraising quarter on June 30, Skarlatos had raised more than twice as much as Hoyle, $2.57 million to her $1.12 million. District demographics and voting history favors Hoyle, and national forecasters at the Cook Political Report rate the district as “leans Democratic.”
This news today I've just read, about Trump supporters using denial-of-service style attacks, and making death threats, on state and local election administrations across the country, really pisses me off. I'm tired of hearing this shit.
It's not only their direct attacks, it is their coordinated use of record requests aimed at overwhelming local election offices to deliberately undermine the 2022 midterm election. The proper response across the country should be "we will look at your requests after the upcoming election". Furthermore IMO fake record requests should be treated the same way as fake electors -- and charges should be applied to those sending nonsense requests to election offices with the intent of undermining democracy. Trump backers accused of weaponizing records requests to 'destabilize' midterms https://www.rawstory.com/trump-back...ing-records-requests-to-destabilize-midterms/ Election officials across the U.S. are facing what many believe appears to be a coordinated effort to overwhelm their offices just as employees are mailing out absentee ballots and preparing for the 2022 midterms—and critics say the deluge of requests hitting election offices is the work of prominent supporters of former President Donald Trump. "County officials are drowning. And in some cases, when the requester does not like the response they get, they become belligerent and threatening." As The Washington Post reported Sunday, election workers in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and other states have spent much of their time in recent weeks fielding requests for an array of documents related to the 2020 election, which Trump continues to claim was fraudulent. Although many counties have published electronic images of all ballots cast in 2020, election offices are receiving demands for documents including poll books, spoiled ballots, remade ballots, voter registration applications, and cast vote records—a record of everything scanned by voting machines, which high-profile election deniers say could help identify ballots that they baselessly claim were switched from votes for Trump to President Joe Biden. Election workers are bound by law to respond to records requests, which government watchdogs agree serve a vital purpose in ensuring a transparent, fair democratic system. "They should not be used to harass or overwhelm a system as these coordinated requests from Trump supporters to local election offices appear intended to do," said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), on Monday. Workers in the Bureau of Elections in Michigan has spent roughly 600 hours processing public records requests this year, while the midterm elections require that they hire poll workers, send out ballots to absentee voters and members of the military, secure polling locations, and make other preparations for voting, which starts as early as late September in some states. Officials in Wisconsin told The Post that monthly records requests are coming in four times more frequently than in 2020, and the election office in Brunswick County, North Carolina has received 10 to 15 since mid-August. In Maricopa County, Arizona, workers have fielded an unprecedented amount of requests for cast vote records. Trump backer Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, called on supporters to request the records at an event in August, according to the voting rights news organization Votebeat. "In 2021, 11 requests came in for the cast vote record," reported Votebeat last week. "In 2022, up through August 25, the county has gotten more than 90, with more coming in every day." In Brunswick County, one official told The Post, a request for absentee ballot envelopes sent a worker to an off-site warehouse for an entire day, cutting down on time to dedicate to setting up polling locations. Some of the requests have included admissions that the constituent is acting at the urging of Lindell and other Trump supporters, according to The Post. Many also include identical language, including threats to sue election bureaus their their "involvement in the fraudulent elections that will soon be proven to have taken place since 2017." Matt Crain of the Colorado County Clerks Association told The Post that Trump supporters appear to be waging "a denial-of-service attack on local government," rendering election offices unable to perform their usual work of organizing the election that's set to take place in just eight weeks. Election officials in dozens of counties across nearly two dozen states have been inundated with the requests. "It is happening all over the country," tweeted Sara Tindall Ghazal, a state election board member in Georgia. "County officials are drowning. And in some cases, when the requester does not like the response they get, they become belligerent and threatening." The apparently coordinated attack on election offices comes as election workers face other forms of harassment following the 2020 election, with 1 in 5 saying earlier this year that they planned to quit due to the threats. The barrage of requests is straining an already "overloaded system," said Leslie Proll, senior director of the voting rights program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Republican county election commissioner is arrested and charged by the FBI Rensselaer County Board of Elections commissioner Jason T. Schofield was under investigation for his use of an online portal to obtain absentee ballots -- an investigation that led to the guilty plea earlier this year of a Troy councilwoman. The charges against Schofield remain sealed pending his first court appearance.