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Dec. 18, 2020 - Epoch Times
18:56
Republican Electors Barred From Courthouse; The REAL Reason Barr "Resigned"? | Facts Matter
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Good evening.
Yesterday, President Trump announced that William Barr will be stepping down as Attorney General.
Now technically, William Barr resigned, accompanied by this usual complimentary letter to the President.
However, something obviously went wrong with his relationship with President Trump.
What is it?
Let's examine that together.
This is your 2020 election update, and I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
Now, the writing was on the wall for William Barr's resignation for a while now, and we can look at three areas for evidence of that.
First of all, let's look at the Trump-Russia probe.
In, maybe two years ago now, William Barr promised that he would get to the bottom of the Trump-Russia investigation, what was known as crossfire hurricane inside of the FBI. And in so doing, he assigned John Durham, who has a reputation for being a hard-nosed U.S. attorney, to uncover the truth behind what happened and bring people to justice.
However, very soon afterwards, hints of trouble began to emerge within this investigation.
For instance, William Barr informed us, the public, that higher officials, likely meaning people like Barack Obama and Joe Biden, were not in John Durham's brief to investigate.
And that was even though both Obama and Biden attended a meeting back in January of 2016 from where a lot of this crossfire hurricane stuff might have originated from.
Now, why did William Barr play it this way?
Well, as justification, he made it seem that he was trying to put an end to the politicization of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and maybe that really was his intention.
But in the eyes of the people that I spoke to around this country, it seemed like to them that William Barr's unwillingness to investigate Obama and Biden It meant that some people are just above the law.
And so what has come of this Durham investigation thus far?
Well, we've been waiting for the fable Durham report for a year and a half, maybe even two years now.
And I always assume that they are just being extremely thorough and that's why it's taking so long.
But maybe they're just dragging their feet.
I'm not sure.
President Trump seems to think that that's what's happening.
At a White House address, he said, And then he went on to say, So who knows if he is ever going to even do a report?
Now secondly, in regards to Hunter Biden, there's the question of why William Barr did not disclose to the American people prior to the election the fact that Hunter Biden was under federal investigation.
Because if you remember, prior to the election, it was revealed that the FBI was in possession of Hunter Biden's laptop for over a year.
But William Barr did not say anything.
Specifically, President Trump recently asked on Twitter, why didn't Bill Barr reveal the truth to the public, before the election, about Hunter Biden?
Joe Biden was lying on the debate stage that nothing was wrong, nothing was going on, and the press confirmed it.
Big disadvantage for Republicans at the polls.
Now reportedly, this probe into Hunter Biden's dealing with China started all the way back in 2018, two years ago.
And Bill Barr was aware of it the whole time, but he didn't say anything.
His excuse, again, was that the Department of Justice should not get involved in politics.
However, there is an argument to be made that by remaining silent and not revealing this massive corruption investigation that was ongoing, that was also getting involved in politics, just in another way.
And now thirdly, in terms of election fraud, over the last several weeks, President Trump has expressed over and over again how disappointed he was with William Barr's performance in regards to investigating voter fraud.
If you remember, Bill Barr said in an interview about a week and a half ago that, to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.
Now, I don't know what documents William Barr is looking at over at the DOJ, but if you've been following our program here over the last several weeks, you might have a different take on the evidence that's been collected thus far.
Now, of course, I just want to mention, I'm just a guy on YouTube.
It's not my job or my place to judge William Barr's performance.
I'm just giving you the broader context for why he might have stepped down, or why he might have been fired, whatever you want to call it, so that you can make up your own mind as to whether it was right or wrong.
Now, in terms of the Department of Justice, Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen will now become the Acting Attorney General starting on December 24th, when William Barr officially resigns.
Now, if you'd like to read more about this story with William Barr, I'll throw the links into the description box below this video for you to check out.
Read it yourself and make your own decision whether he should have been let go or not.
And while you're down there, also make a quick decision to smash that like button.
These videos take the culmination of many, many long hours to research and put together, and even though they are very well fact-based, they are still routinely censored by big tech.
However, when you smash that like button, you are forcing the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
Now let's move on over to Facebook.
You know that sweet, sweet feeling of big tech censorship when you're scrolling through your Facebook feed and come across some blurred out content that's been rated false by the independent fact checkers?
Well, one of those independent fact checkers, an organization called Lead Stories, is partly paid through a partnership with TikTok.
What is TikTok?
Well, it's a social media platform run by a Chinese company that owes its allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party.
And it's currently being probed by U.S. officials as a national security threat.
And you want to know the best part?
The organization that's supposed to oversee the quality of fact checkers is run by Poynter Institute, which is another TikTok partner.
Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of Chinese Communist money being used to censor Americans.
So to start with, I want to point out that all of this information comes from our phenomenal investigative reporter Peter Swab, who spent weeks looking into this stuff.
You gotta give credit where credit is due.
Now let's dig deeper.
Lead Stories was started back in 2015 by a Belgian web developer, a CNN veteran, and two lawyers.
The company seemed to have grown rather slowly at first.
In 2017, for instance, it listed operating expenses of less than $50,000.
But by 2019, just last year, they had expanded sevenfold, largely because of the more than $460,000 that Facebook paid them for fact-checking services.
The company then expanded and took on more than a dozen staffers, about half of them being former CNN employees.
This year, Lead Stories funding sources include Google, Facebook, ByteDance—that's TikTok's Chinese parent company, by the way, based in Beijing—as well as several online advertising services, which doesn't account for much.
Now, let's discuss what Lead Stories actually does.
In terms of content here in the U.S., they have become one of Facebook's most prolific fact-checkers.
However, this fact-checking function has drawn a ton of criticism as being used to facilitate censorship.
That's because a post that's been flagged as being false not only gets a big warning label stuck on it, but Facebook also significantly reduces the number of people who see it according to the company website.
And these fact checkers themselves can choose which content to review and they can decide what is labeled as false and why.
And any complaints about their verdict must be raised with the fact checkers themselves.
Who, if you've ever dealt with them yourself, aren't readily known to change their minds.
So think about that for a moment.
One of the most prolific fact-checkers on Facebook is partly funded by Beijing-based ByteDance Corporation.
And if you're wondering who ByteDance has an allegiance to, well listen to this.
In September of last year, it was reported that TikTok instructed its moderators to censor certain videos.
Which videos?
Well, for instance, ones that mention sensitive topics like the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the persecution of Falun Gong.
In December of last year, TikTok suspended the account of an American teen who posted a video criticizing Beijing's suppression of Uyghur Muslims.
And in June of this year, TikTok closed the account of a Chinese international student who was studying in New Jersey after he posted a video making fun of the Chinese national anthem.
And so this beacon of Chinese freedom of speech is among the list of funders for Elite Stories fact-checking services.
That's really heartening to hear.
Perhaps it's a nice prelude to what we can look forward to here in America.
I hear the fact checkers coming.
They're scrolling around the bend.
And I ain't made a new post since.
I don't know when I'm stuck in Facebook prison.
Now, we reached out to both lead stories as well as by dance for comment, but I've yet to hear back.
Maybe they'll just flag this video as false, and that'll be the end of it.
Regardless, I'll throw a link to the full investigation into the description box below this video for you to check out for yourself.
And now, let's move on over to Wisconsin.
Yesterday, there were two developments in Wisconsin which seemed to contradict each other.
So the first thing that happened was that the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected President Trump's lawsuit, which was seeking to overturn the state's election results.
That lawsuit specifically was trying to invalidate several different batches of ballots that were cast in Dane and Milwaukee County.
They included ballots where clerks improperly added witness information, ballots that were collected at Democracy in the Park events, as well as 28,000 ballots that were cast by people who did not provide a photo ID because they claimed to be indefinitely confined.
Now let's pause here for a moment and talk about this concept of being indefinitely confined.
According to Wisconsin state law, voters need to present a photo ID when requesting an absentee or mail-in ballot.
The only exceptions to this law are for voters who are either hospitalized or indefinitely confined because of age, physical illness, or infirmity.
However, this lawsuit alleges that these 28,000 people who did not show ID did not meet the legal standard of being indefinitely confined, and instead, they just cited the pandemic as the reason that they couldn't go out to vote.
Now, in this lawsuit, however, the court was not having it.
Here's a very interesting passage from the court's decision to dismiss the case.
They said, Okay, so the reason that I say that this is very interesting is because later on that very same day, in a different lawsuit in Wisconsin, This very same Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the public health restrictions that were made amidst the pandemic are not valid reasons for people to vote without showing an idea.
In this other case that was brought forth by the Republican Party, the court ruled that the Wisconsin governor's stay-at-home order does not mean that everyone is indefinitely confined.
And furthermore, and this is where it starts to really heat up, the court also ruled that votes could not count for people who falsely claimed that they were indefinitely confined.
Now this is a very, very big deal because about a week ago I saw some research which showed that nearly 100,000 people might have exploited this exemption to not show valid ID citing the virus as why they were indefinitely confined.
Now, however, I want to mention that it's unclear whether this decision from the court will invalidate some of the votes that were cast this year or whether it's simply a reference for future elections.
We'll probably find that out later this week.
If you want to read the court's decision in both of these cases, I'll throw those links in the description box below this video for you to check out for yourself.
And now, let's move on over to Michigan.
Yesterday, we discussed the bombshell forensic report, which found that the Dominion voting machines were intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.
If you haven't already, I would highly recommend that you check out that episode.
I'll throw the link in the top right corner here for you to check out.
But this story is developing and it's getting a lot deeper.
First of all, one of our investigative journalists is currently working on a story about how the Dominion machine seemed to have affected elections across the country.
That story will be published later today, probably in the late afternoon.
And also later today, for the first time since the election, the CEO of Dominion, a man named John Paulus, will be answering questions in front of the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee.
In a letter prior to this hearing, Paulus wrote that he appreciated the opportunity to correct the baseless and defamatory claims being made about our systems.
Okay, so later today we'll listen to the hearing and let you know what comes of it.
Alright, it is now later today and quite a few developments have come about.
First of all, this report did drop, and it's pretty good.
Basically, a fraud analyst who makes a living developing algorithms to detect fraud, he went county by county throughout the United States, and he compared counties that adopted the Dominion voting machine systems versus ones that did not, And what he found is that even once you control for a number of factors, such as changes in population, as well as swings in demographics, counties that adopted the Dominion voting machines, on average, moved two to three percentage points towards Democratic presidential candidates versus counties that did not adopt these machines.
So that's pretty significant.
And he studied presidential elections all the way back to 2008, up until this year to 2020.
So this is a pretty thick report.
I'll have more time this evening to comb through it, and I'll give you a full analysis of it tomorrow in tomorrow's episode.
However, this is what I really want to talk about.
The CEO of Dominion testified in front of the Senate hearing in Michigan, and two things came out.
First of all, in regards to the SolarWinds Orion hack that we discussed in yesterday's episode, here's what he had to say.
Quote, We don't use the SolarWinds Orion package that was the subject of the Department of Homeland Security report on December the 13th.
So he said that they don't use the Orion package.
Now what's interesting is that SolarWinds came out and said that non-Orion products did not appear to be compromised.
So it could mean that they do use the SolarWinds products, just not part of the Orion package.
None of the lawmakers who were present at a hearing asked for clarification, so we can't know for sure.
We actually reached out to Dominion for comment, but I've yet to hear back.
But at the very least, preliminarily, it looks like they were not hacked, which is good.
And secondarily, the Dominion CEO, when discussing the Dominion machines, basically said that they were not involved in any kind of vote switching or vote deleting, saying that the machines are not able to do that.
And in addressing the forensic exam report out of Michigan that we discussed yesterday, he said that he only had a chance to do a cursory review of that report, but he called it severely flawed and again doubled down and said that the allegations are not true and that with the machines it's impossible to vote switch one way or the other.
So, I mean, basically this whole hearing was sort of similar to what happens when you email Dominion, they deny everything.
It was a little frustrating for me to watch because there were some things that I was really hoping the lawmakers would ask, such as to address that video that we watched yesterday, in yesterday's episode of the election supervisor going in real time during the adjudication process and showing how already cast ballots could be shifted from one candidate to the other.
They didn't ask that question.
So, you know, if anything else comes about, we'll let you know as soon as we find out.
Otherwise, Roman in the studio, back to you.
If you want to get deeper into the details of this hearing, we'll throw all the links in the description box below this video for you to check out.
Now, let's stay in Michigan for a moment and discuss what happened yesterday at the state capitol.
Republican electors were blocked from entering the state capitol building in Lansing, which is a city in Michigan.
Democratic electors, on the other hand, were permitted to enter.
According to video footage from the scene, a Michigan state police officer told the Republican electors that the building was closed due to credible threats of violence.
He then blocked the Republican electors from entering, and this is the scene that unfolded.
Take a look.
The electors are already here.
They've been checked in.
Not all the electors are inside.
All 16 electors that we've been advised by the governor's staff that we're going to be here to vote in electoral college.
They've been checked in.
They're already here.
So why were the Republican electors there in the first place?
I mean, Joe Biden is the certified winner in Michigan, right?
Well, because Michigan is still probing allegations of election fraud, it's not totally clear which set of electors should officially represent the state.
Because don't forget, under the Electoral College system that we have here in America, even though we, the voters, mark the name of the presidential candidate on the ballot that we support, we're not actually voting for that candidate.
We're actually voting for a slate of electors to be sent to the Electoral College.
And with pending lawsuits and investigations still unfolding, it's still not necessarily clear which set of electors should be sent.
And so in Michigan, as well as in several other states where Joe Biden is listed as the official winner, Republican electors cast their votes for President Trump.
They did this because, for one, it allows them to continue fighting legal challenges in the courts until January 20th.
Basically, it gives them legal standing.
And secondly, this sets up a very special situation where you have basically two groups of electors.
It's also known as having dueling electors or alternate electors.
And so what'll happen is that next month in January, the House and Senate will have to decide which set of electors to actually select.
And if they're split on their decision, if they can't make up their minds, that could lead a state's electors to be rejected by Mike Pence, who is of course the Vice President of the U.S. as well as the President of the Senate.
And if you're wondering, this is not the first time that this has happened.
The situation also played out back in 1876 when two sets of electors in several states submitted votes.
Back then, eventually, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner after the parties came to an agreement.
However, in 2020, when the two parties can't seem to agree on anything, we just have to wait and see what happens.
In Michigan, we reached out to the governor as well as the leaders of both the House and the Senate for comment, but I've yet to hear back.
We'll keep you abreast of any developments as they're going to be coming about in regards to the Electoral College as well as in regards to these dueling electors in several states.
And if you want to go deeper into what happened in Michigan yesterday, I'll throw a link to that article in the description box below this video for you to check out for yourself.
And lastly, I'd like to discuss some developments in the Hunter Biden story.
Back in September of 2017, Hunter Biden sent an email to the manager of his Washington, D.C. office building asking her to make some extra keys for his office mates.
Okay, well, who exactly was he referring to?
Well, in that email, here is who he listed as his new office mates.
Joe Biden, his stepmother Jill Biden, his uncle Jim Biden, as well as Gong Wen Dong, who is identified as the emissary for the chairman of Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.
In that same email, Hunter Biden also requested that a sign be made for his office stating the Biden Foundation and Hudson West.
Now, the reason that this is very interesting is because Joe Biden's campaign spokesman said, Now, I'll mention that it's thus far not known whether Joe Biden had ever actually visited Hunter Biden's D.C. office.
However, the fact that Hunter Biden requested that his father be granted access with his own set of keys...
Raises serious questions about the extent of Joe Biden's knowledge of these Chinese business dealings.
Now, we reached out to both Hunter Biden's lawyer as well as to Joe Biden's team several times, but I've yet to hear back.
If you'd like to read more about this story, I'll throw that link in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And lastly, if you haven't already, I would highly recommend that you watch our new documentary, which was just released yesterday, titled Who is Stealing America?
It is a deep investigation into this election, and it's so deep that we can't even host it on YouTube because of their new policy.
So I'll throw that link in the description box below this video for you to check out.
Otherwise, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Subscribe to this channel to get this honest news content delivered to your YouTube feed every single day.
Leave a comment below if you think we missed something.
And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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