Dec. 24, 2021 - Epoch Times
16:23
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| Good evening. | |
| Over in Texas, the Secretary of State's office has just officially announced that they are in fact going to be conducting an Arizona-style forensic audit of the 2020 election results across four large Texas counties. | |
| In fact, according to the statement that they just released, they actually have already begun. | |
| Meanwhile, as the trust in the WHO, which is the World Health Organization, has been pretty bad over the last year due to what happened over in China, well, it's not about to get any better. | |
| That's because just yesterday this independent report was released and it found, after a lengthy investigation, that 21 staff members of the WHO, they sexually abused, sexually exploited, and even raped dozens of women and children, some as young as 13 years of age, during the Ebola outbreak over in the Democratic Republic of Congo. | |
| Let's go through it all together. | |
| This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times. | |
| And now let's begin today's discussion over in Texas, where the Secretary of State's office has just officially announced that they are going to be conducting a forensic audit of the 2020 election results in four large Texas counties. | |
| Now, to begin with, I'd like to give you a bit of background on what's been happening there. | |
| You might remember that all the way back in July, so three months ago now, Ken Paxton, who is the Texas Attorney General, he said that he in fact endorses an audit of the state's 2020 election results. | |
| And he said that right after another Texas state representative, Mr. Stephen Toth, after he introduced a new bill into the Texas legislature, which would carry out an election review of Texas's most populous counties. | |
| Specifically, that particular bill was looking to conduct an audit of any county in Texas which has more than 415,000 residents. | |
| And in Texas, that would mean 13 counties. | |
| And in response to that bill getting introduced into the Texas legislature, here is what Ken Paxton said while being interviewed on a radio program. | |
| I don't know why we wouldn't want to give people confidence in our elections and give them the chance to know for sure that they've had an audit and things are good or they're bad. | |
| And it gives us an opportunity to figure out how we want to correct that. | |
| However, even back then, Ken Paxton admitted that this proposal may not be feasible because those counties, those particular counties, may not comply with the state senate, leading to a drawn out legal battle in the court system, sort of like we saw over in Arizona. | |
| Here's specifically what he said on this front. | |
| I think he had like 15 of the top counties of the state. | |
| Well, that's a lot of people. | |
| That's a lot of votes. | |
| I don't know how much cooperation you're going to get from some of those counties. | |
| So it could be an undertaking that takes quite a while. | |
| But it may be worth doing once just to see where we're at. | |
| For your reference, by the way, of those 13 counties which they were aiming to audit, only three of them voted for President Trump during the 2020 election. | |
| The other 10 all voted for Joe Biden. | |
| And as you can imagine, when that audit bill was first proposed into the state legislature, Texas Democrats, they dismissed the idea, just like Democrats have done across the entire country. | |
| For instance, Mr. Chris Turner, who is a Democrat lawmaker over in Texas, and he's also the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, he told a local news outlet that he believes this audit would be just useless. | |
| Here's specifically what he said. | |
| I don't know if these folks are aware of it, Trump actually did carry Texas. | |
| So I'm not sure what they're trying to find out in their audit. | |
| However, not everyone thought it would be useless. | |
| For instance, as we mentioned just a moment ago, Ken Paxton, who is again the Texas Attorney General, he supported the idea. | |
| And you might say, well, of course he did, Roman, because he's a Republican. | |
| However, there was more to it than that, because around the same time, Ken Paxton said that there was 386 more cases of alleged election fraud that were added to his office's caseload, which, by the way, is on top of the already 511 cases of election fraud that they were already investigating. | |
| Here's specifically what he said during his speech. | |
| Do not believe the narrative, because in Texas, we are going to fight election fraud. | |
| Now, I just wanted to pause here for a very quick moment and say that what he's likely referencing is the claim that's often made by Democrats that voter fraud just doesn't exist. | |
| However, Ken Paxton then goes on to note that that notion is actually a false narrative. | |
| Here's what he says, quote, Let me just tell you right now, my office has 511 counts in court because of COVID waiting to be heard. | |
| We have another 386 that we're investigating. | |
| If you add those together, that's more election fraud than my office has prosecuted since it started investigating election fraud years and years ago. | |
| However, over the past three months, all has been relatively quiet on the Texas election audit front. | |
| In fact, that bill that we mentioned earlier that was introduced into the Texas Statehouse, it seems to have just been stuck in place over the last three months. | |
| However, that all changed last week, right around the time that Arizona released their forensic audit report, which, among several other things, uncovered multiple, let's call them inconsistencies in the Arizona election. | |
| In fact, we discussed those in a previous episode where we went through them point by point in that report. | |
| And when that report was released, President Trump, he called on Governor Greg Abbott, who is the governor of Texas. | |
| He's a Republican. | |
| And President Trump called on him to carry out a forensic audit in Texas as well. | |
| Specifically, in a letter that he sent to the governor, President Trump said that the time was running out to conduct an audit of the 2020 presidential election because paper ballots are kept for only 22 months after an election in the state of Texas. | |
| The implication being likely that if you don't begin the process ASAP in at least a few counties, then it likely won't be able to happen at all because the ballots will not be kept after that point. | |
| And then President Trump added this in his letter to the governor. | |
| Governor Abbott, we need a forensic audit of the 2020 election added to the call. | |
| We're quickly running out of time and it must be done this week. | |
| And indeed it was. | |
| Shortly after that letter was published, Governor Greg Abbott, he agreed and he ordered that an audit take place. | |
| So that was about a week ago. | |
| And thus far we haven't heard any more details about it, although that was until Wednesday, just two days ago. | |
| On Wednesday, the Texas Secretary of State's office They announced that they will be carrying out a forensic audit of the 2020 election in four large counties, specifically Tarrant, Collins, Dallas, and Harris County, and Harris County includes the city of Houston. | |
| Furthermore, the office announced that the Phase 1 of this election audit has already begun, and according to their statement, quote... | |
| This phase involves verifying the accuracy of voting machines, assessing cybersecurity, and pinpointing and removing from voter rolls any people who cast votes illegally in 2020. | |
| Furthermore, the state officials said that they are collecting reports from the Electronic Registration Information Center in regards to voters who may have voted twice or who voted illegally in Texas while living in another state. | |
| And then additionally, they said this, quote, Officials have identified votes they say were potentially cast by non-US citizens and alerted counties to review each case. | |
| Once that's done, any instances of possible illegal voting will be referred to the state attorney general's office for investigation. | |
| Then, they said after all that is finished, the secretary of state's office, they said that the second phase of this process will then commence. | |
| And according to their statement, here's what's going to happen. | |
| Quote, And in this process, they hope to examine all of the chain of custody forms concerning the election equipment as well as all the records pertaining to the voting machines. | |
| And along this line, I do wish them better luck than the auditors out in Arizona. | |
| Regardless, they said that based on the results of their examination in Phase 1 and Phase 2, they might trigger a full manual recount of all the affected precincts and the specific polling locations. | |
| And they ended this statement by stating that the purpose of this whole process, the purpose of the whole audit, well, here's specifically what they said about it, quote, The purpose of this audit is to ensure all Texas voters can have confidence in the election systems in our state, and to address any outstanding issues county election officials may face that undermines the integrity of our elections. | |
| Now, we hear the Epoch Times also did reach out to the election offices in the four different counties that are going to be audited, but none of them responded. | |
| However, there was a statement that was released by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. | |
| She's a Democrat, and she told reporters last week that all of this is just a political ploy and that she will do everything in her power to stop the audit. | |
| Here's specifically what she said. | |
| The sensational announcement of an audit by the state is nothing more than a political ploy by a former president and someone who's trying to curry favor. | |
| I'm working to do everything in my power to stop this, not only because complying with a sham audit will take us away from the serious work we have to do, but also, and most importantly, because it will take trust away from our election systems here in Harris County and here in Texas. | |
| However, on the flip side, Governor Greg Abbott, he was recently over on Fox News, and he defended his decision to push forward with an audit by saying this. | |
| There are audits of every aspect of government. | |
| We have a state auditor. | |
| There's a federal auditor for the way that government operations work. | |
| Businesses that are public companies are subject to an annual audit. | |
| Why do we audit everything in this world, but people raise their hands in concern when we audit elections, which is fundamental to our democracy? | |
| During that same interview, by the way, Governor Abbott also mentioned that the audit actually began several months ago, even though it hadn't been previously disclosed, although it's not exactly clear what he meant by that. | |
| And so, here at the Epoch Times, we will be following this new audit closely and see whether it develops into a full-fledged audit like what we saw over in Arizona, or if it just fizzles out like what we saw over in Pennsylvania. | |
| If I myself, if I had to guess, I would imagine that it will move forward since the governor's office, the secretary of state's office, the attorney general's office, as well as both the state senate and the state house, they are all controlled by Republicans in the state of Texas. | |
| However, on the flip side, though, the individual counties, well, they have a lot of Democrats in power, And you also do have the federal government, specifically Merrick Garland over in the Justice Department, putting a lot of pressure on the states to not conduct any forensic audits. | |
| And so, we'll just have to see how all this plays out. | |
| If you'd like to read more about this Texas audit, if you would like to go deeper into anything that we've discussed, I'll throw several articles about it into the description box below this video for you to check out. | |
| And all I ask in return is that you take a quick moment to vote with your finger and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm. | |
| And now let's move on over and discuss this new report right here, which uncovered some grave sexual abuse, exploitation, and even rape that was conducted by staff members of the WHO. That's a great question, Roman. | |
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| And now let's talk about the WHO. | |
| Just yesterday, a new independent report was released, which found after a lengthy investigation that 21 staff members of the WHO, they sexually abused and sexually exploited dozens of women during the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. | |
| And this abuse, by the way, it took place between the years of 2018 all the way up to 2020. | |
| And frankly, the details of this abuse are quite stark. | |
| In total, 83 women, as well as girls as young as 13 years old, they had allegations of serious abuse, including nine allegations of rape. | |
| And according to this report, the way that this abuse actually played out was that these women and these girls, they were promised to be given jobs in exchange for sex. | |
| And so these perpetrators who were there in the Democratic Republic of Congo on a WHO humanitarian mission, they would rent a room, a hotel room, or some other place of accommodation and take advantage of these women by promising them jobs in exchange. | |
| However, the promises of jobs, they never came to fruition. | |
| As most of these victims, they actually never received any employment and were instead just continuously sexually abused by these perpetrators. | |
| Furthermore, some of the women who actually wouldn't go along with the sexual abuse, they were actually fired from the jobs that they did have. | |
| Furthermore, according to this report, this abuse actually led to 29 pregnancies, 22 of which led to actual births. | |
| And some of the perpetrators, meaning these WHO officials, they actually forced some of the women to have abortions. | |
| Now, in response to this report, the United Nations, they came out and they said that they will ban these perpetrators, these identified perpetrators, from ever working with the WHO again. | |
| And for your reference, by the way, four of these perpetrators who were named in this report, they were still working for the WHO when these allegations came to light. | |
| However, they have reportedly had their contracts canceled since this report was released. | |
| Now, in terms of any criminal proceedings, at least at this moment, nothing has come of it, although the authorities over in the Democratic Republic of Congo, they said that they will continue to further investigate this matter in the coming weeks and months. | |
| Now, the WHO Director General, he came out and he acknowledged a clear lapse in leadership in regards to what happened here in the Congo. | |
| Here's part of his statement. | |
| This was not only a sickening betrayal of the people we serve, but also a betrayal of our colleagues who put themselves in harm's way to serve others. | |
| This is a dark day for the WHO, but by shining a light on the failures of individuals and the organization, we hope that the victims feel that their voices have been heard and acted on. | |
| The WHO, they further released another statement saying that they are concerned with providing these women with some concrete support, including medical, psychological support, as well as assistance in educating their new children. | |
| Here's how the WHO Director General again explained it. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| I'm sorry for what was done to you by people who were employed by the WHO to serve you and protect you. | |
| I'm sorry for the ongoing suffering that these events must cause. | |
| I'm sorry that you have had to relive them in talking to the Commission about your experiences. | |
| Thank you for your courage in doing so. | |
| If you'd like to read more about these WHO perpetrators, as well as this full report, I'll throw all that into the description box below this video so you can read it for yourself. | |
| And now lastly, since you've finished this episode of Facts Matter, then I would highly recommend that you head on over to Epic TV. Check out this awesome episode of American Thought Leaders, where Jan sat down with Rabbi Abraham Cooper, and they discussed how to protect Christians from persecution in the Middle East. | |
| Here's a trailer for that episode. | |
| Here we are in the 21st century, Christians being killed in their churches, in their homes. | |
| What would happen if the U.S. removed all remaining troops in Iraq and Syria? | |
| The Yazidis and the Assyrian Christians, they would essentially disappear. | |
| From atrocities in the Middle East, to killings in Nigeria, to genocide in China. | |
| The silence of the world will be taken, understood differently by tyrants. | |
| In this episode, I sit down with Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Director of Global Social Action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. | |
| We discuss the fight against anti-Semitism, combating religious persecution globally, and how the Abraham Accords transformed the Middle East dynamic. | |
| This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. | |
| If you want to check out that episode, as well as all the other awesome content over on Epic TV, I'll put the link right there. | |
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