(breitbart) – Black Lives Matter PAC hopes to raise half a million dollars to boost Georgia Senate Democrat candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, according to a report released on Thursday.
The Black Lives Matter PAC wrote in an email to supporters:
We know how important this election is going to be in determining what decisions will be made in the Senate for the next few years — decisions that will impact us directly, like access to quality and affordable health care, reforming the criminal justice system, all the way to major electoral reform like passing the BREATHE Act.
The Georgia Senate runoffs in January will determine whether Democrats will gain control of the Senate majority. If Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) lose to Warnock and Ossoff, then Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) would become the tiebreaking vote in the Senate should she be formally elected vice president.
Black Lives Matter supporters hope to pass the BREATHE Act, which would shut down and defund several federal agencies and close prisons as well as immigration detention centers.
The report follows as President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would campaign in Georgia to help Loeffler and Perdue win in January.
Georgia GOP spokeswoman Abigail Sigler said in a statement Friday that Warnock and Ossoff would continue to enable defunding the police and other extreme leftist measures, while Loeffler and Perdue would defend Georgia law enforcement.
Sigler said:
Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have already endorsed defunding the police and continue to accept support from far-left activists who will throw our country into chaos. Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler have made it clear they will stand with law enforcement and ensure they have the resources they need to keep our communities safe.
She added, “Georgians deserve to know if Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock support BLM PAC’s extreme agenda, including the radical BREATHE Act.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
(AFP) — Biting new Chinese trade tariffs have stoked fears that Australia’s virus-weakened economy is being targeted for political retribution and the two countries may be sliding into a shadow trade war.
Since Canberra pointedly demanded an investigation into the origins and spread of the coronavirus, the number of Aussie businesses being squeezed in China has exploded.
Crates of Australian rock lobsters have been left to rot at a Chinese airport, and mountains of coal have been stuck in Chinese ports.
On Friday, Beijing turned the screw again, hitting Australian wine exports with punitive tariffs of up to 212 percent, essentially closing off a US$1 billion market.
In total, 13 sectors have been targeted according to a running tally from Jeffrey Wilson, a trade expert with the Perth USAsia Centre think tank.
The list so far includes barley, beef, coal, copper, cotton, lobsters, sugar, timber, tourism, universities, wine, wheat and wool.
Wilson estimates the total value of Australian goods at risk at around US$40 billion.
It is an eye-watering number that represents 12 per cent of all Australia’s exports, in a country experiencing its first recession in 30 years.
China Berates Australia: Bow Down to Beijing’s Might and Ignore the U.S. https://t.co/CLqklYbpyI
Beyond the fear, fury and headline-grabbing restrictions, trade experts say the overall economic impact for Australia has so far been more modest.
“The number of industries that have been sanctioned is large, but the direct economic impact to the economy as a whole in Australia is going to be significantly smaller,” said Wilson.
He estimates the actual economic impact may be US$2 billion to US$4 billion, and perhaps less if affected firms look for other export markets.
Curbs on Australian beef have affected only four meat processing plants, three of which are not Australian-owned.
And China’s suggestion that its tourists and students boycott Australia poses only a limited threat while there is a virtual ban on travel Down Under during the pandemic.
“The action on coal is something that comes up this time every year, because China has this soft quota on coal imports,” said Stephen Kirchner, a trade and investment expert at Sydney University’s United States Studies Centre.
“It’s a calendar-year quota, so you start to bump up against the quota round about this time.”
In the two hardest-hit sectors — barley and wine — where an Australian export market could be wiped out entirely, the “retaliation” may have happened even if Canberra and Beijing were best of friends.
Scott Waldron of the University of Queensland has studied Chinese agricultural tariffs extensively and believes the sanctions are as much about China’s security goals, shaping its own economy and protecting local jobs.
Beijing has mulled restricting Australian barley imports since 2018 at the latest, amid worries that China — which produces only around 20 per cent of the barley it needs — is overly dependent on imports.
“The wine case is very similar,” Waldron said. “China’s had a really active industry policy for wine for more than a decade” and an industry body that is increasingly keen to ringfence its home market from imports.
Waldron points to the precedent in Beijing’s use of domestic subsidies and import quotas to reduce dependence on US corn, from a vulnerable 90 per cent imported to around nine per cent today.
“There are domestic trade and industry policy reasons why they are doing these things,” he said.
While that may hurt individual Australian companies, the higher cost for Australia may be political — being made an example of by its largest trade partner.
“This is really about sending a message to other countries,” said Wilson. “‘Keep your mouth shut or we’ll do to you what we’re doing to Australia.’”
Officially, China says the disputes are technical and unrelated.
But through leaks and state media commentary, Beijing has hinted the trade problems are a result of what the Global Times called the “deteriorating China-Australia relationship”.
“They will never draw that nexus explicitly,” said Kirchner. “But they do enough to draw it implicitly.”
China Says Australia Becoming ‘Poor White Trash of Asia’ by Resisting Beijing https://t.co/l1rl0ZXqtM
(breitbart) – Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Wednesday slammed the two Democratic senatorial candidates in the Georgia January 5 runoff election challenging GOP incumbents Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Blackburn warned during an appearance on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants to change the United States with a “socialist agenda” by getting both Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected. According to Blackburn, those two candidates, are “absolutely the most radical candidates that have ever been Senate nominees.”
“Look at Chuck Schumer’s remarks,” Blackburn began. “He didn’t say we’re going to go win Georgia, we’re going to fight for every vote. He said, ‘First we take Georgia.’ How disrespectful of Georgia voters. ‘First, we take Georgia then we change America.’ And that socialist agenda should scare people. I mean, he’s talking about defunding the police, statehood for D.C., packing the court, taking away your health insurance, implementing the Green New Deal, repealing the Trump tax cuts, and they say that is their first 100-day agenda if they’re in charge of everything.”
“And the good people of Georgia — they’re just not for that,” she continued. “They don’t want to give up their guns, they don’t want to give up their free speech, they are not for this socialist path, and these two candidates in Georgia are absolutely the most radical candidates that have ever been Senate nominees. You’ve got Ossoff who is a trust fund socialist, you’ve got Reverend Warnock, Pastor Warnock who is a mentee of Jeremiah Wright. He has called our police officers thugs and he buys right into that socialist left-leaning defund the police, give up our security and safety, give control to government agenda.”
(breitbart) – Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared at a public hearing of Pennsylvania Republicans Wednesday to review his claims of voter fraud and election irregularities in the commonwealth.
The hearing was hosted by the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Committee, led by State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Adams/Cumberland/Franklin/York) at the Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg.
President Trump is relying on Giuliani and campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis to represent his legal battle to challenge 2020 election results in each state.
An audience of Pennsylvania Trump supporters also appeared to listen to the presented evidence.
“All we ask is that you listen to the facts that we are presenting and then evaluate it,” Giuliani said.
Several witnesses appeared in person to describe the voting irregularities they witnessed as they were prevented from meaningful access to the voting process.
“Republicans were uniformly not allowed, kept out, put in chutes like they were cows to keep them away from seeing these ballots,” Giuliani explained.
Other witnesses explained that thousands of ballots were counted in secret, as they were kept out of the room.
Leah Hoopes from Delaware County, Pennsylvania said she served as a poll worker for three straight days as the results came in.
“What became of concern was the back room, which had no observers, no line of sight or transparency into the process. There was no cooperation, complete resistance from election night to every day after,” she said.PA Senate RepublicansVolume 90%03:1403:1403:44
Hoops said she and others were intimidated for coming out and signing affidavits about their concerns with the election.
“We have stuck our necks out, been intimidated, threatened bullied, have spent countless hours away from our families, friends, and jobs,” she said during the hearing.
Attorney Justin C. Kweder, a certified canvass observer, said he returned as an election observer for ten days at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
He said that Republican observers were kept between 10-200 ft. away from the election counting process.
“It was impossible for me or any observer to see what the workers were doing with any type of specificity,” he said.
He also raised concerns about more than 5,000 damaged mail-in ballots that were duplicated by poll workers.
Other witnesses appeared via video teleconferencing to talk about their concerns with “illegal pre-canvassing,” as Democrat counties contacted voters to help “cure” their ballots so they would be counted.
One election observer testified that a poll worker repeatedly cursed at her and threatened to slap her in the face when she tried to verify some of the steps in the voting process.
Giuliani also brought an election security specialist to talk about the voting systems in the United States.
The expert questioned the anomaly of reporting spikes in the voting counts for Biden late in the evening as a “prime indicator of fraudulent voting.”
He claimed that there was a discrepancy of around 700,000 ballots between the number of mail-in ballots sent out and the mail-in ballots that were received.
The audience laughed and gasped in shock as the expert noted a point when a spike of votes recorded in Pennsylvania had 600,000 votes for Biden and only 3,200 for Trump.
WATCH: Crowd gasps after finding out that a mysterious spike of votes in Pennsylvania had 600,000 votes for Biden and only 3,200 for @realDonaldTrumppic.twitter.com/Sa1n3jpyhf
President Trump called in to the hearing, appearing impressed by what he had heard from the witnesses.
He vowed to fight the results of the election and thanked everyone present for sharing their testimonies.
“We have to turn the election over, because there’s no doubt,” Trump said. “We have all the evidence, we have all the affidavits, we have everything. All we need is to have some judge listen to it properly without having a political opinion or having another kind of a problem.”PA Senate RepublicansVolume 90%01:1800:4210:49
The president praised Giuliani for continuing to fight the case, while other lawyers backed down.
“This is going to be your crowning achievement because you are saving our country,” Trump concluded.
Pennsylvania Republicans also took time to question Giuliani and Ellis about the case and the road forward for challenging the election.
State Sen. Mastriano celebrated the successful hearing and thanked the witnesses for stepping up.
“As Jesus said, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,’ and guess what, the truth’s out there,” he said as the hearing drew to a close.
He drew comparisons of their fight to the patriots who birthed freedom in Philadelphia, fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, and the heroes of Flight 93.
(breitbart) – Gregory Stenstrom, a poll watcher in Pennsylvania and CEO of a data sciences company, testified on Wednesday he witnessed over 24 instances of USB cards being connected to voting machines during ballot counting process.
Stenstrom spoke at a State Senate Majority Policy Committee hearing in Gettysburg, PA. He addressed his observations as a poll watcher in Delaware County, PA:
I personally observed USB cards being uploaded to voting machines by the voting machine warehouse supervisor on multiple occasions. I saw this personally. I brought it to the attention of the deputy sheriff who was there stationed, who was a senior law enforcement officer, and I brought to the attention of the clerk of elections.
I brought it to their attention. I objected, and I said this person is not being observed. He’s not part of the process that I can see, and he’s walking in with baggies — which we have pictures of and it was submitted in our affidavits — and he was sticking these USBs into the machines.
So I personally witnessed that happen over 24 times. We have multiple other witnesses who saw it, including Democrat poll watchers.
Stenstrom said he had been told be U.S. Attorney William McSwain such conduct with USBs and voting machines is unusual.
“As of today, 47 USB cards are missing, and they are nowhere to be found,” added Stenstrom. “I was told personally that these 24 to 30 cards that were uploaded weren’t there.”
Stenstrom stated he and a Democrat poll watcher observed between 60,000 and 70,000 unopened mail-in ballots in a locked room:
What I observed in the locked room in the back office was 70,000 unopened mail-in ballots. They were in boxes of 500, stacked in neatly. The gentleman that came in with me is a Democrat poll watcher [and] is a forensic pathologist, a very detailed, very dedicated man and he took meticulous notes, as well, and I verified with him, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
We both agreed — a GOP poll watcher and a Democrat poll watcher — that we had witnessed 60 to 70,000 [unopened mail-in ballots]. We had a little bit of a disagreement there. The problem with that was by that time the mail-in ballots had already been counted. So 120,000 mail-in ballots had already been counted, posted, and done. So my question is, where to the 70,000 ballots go?
And nobody knows we have a picture in here of a large number of boxes that I took that were filled with what appeared to be ballots sitting by the BlueCrest machine. They were there for about three hours and then they disappeared.
Stenstrom described the ballot counting process incorporating elements of “kabuki theater.”
Stenstrom was initially obstructed in his attempts to observe the goings on within the “counting center” on Election Day:
I had been told that there were 10 to 20 GOP poll watchers down there [at the counting center], and everything was well in hand, and out of curiosity I decided to go down. I arrived at six o’clock with four other gentlemen — former military and some good citizens from Delaware County — and we weren’t allowed to get in until eleven o’clock at night, and we had to get some legal help to get us in. So it took us five hours to get upstairs.
[…]
As as an expert in this, I think it’s impossible to verify the validity of about 100,000 to 120,000 votes. Delaware County’s got 425,000 registered voters. Approximately 300,000 of them voted I don’t know what they exact number … but of that number over 100,000 are in question in my mind.
Stenstrom described the election process as “forensically destructive” and lacking a verifiable chain of custody for ballots between their casting and counting.
What I saw as a friend’s six expert was an election process that was forensically destructive in the manner it was conducted, with the envelopes being separated from the ballots and gone to the other side of the room. The problem with that, from being forensically destructive, is that when you go to do a recount, okay, the machines do a pretty good job of recounting so if I have 120,000 mail-in ballots at one side of the room and envelopes at the other side of the room, it’s still going to come out 102,000 votes for Vice President Biden and 18,000 votes for President Trump. I don’t care how many times you recount those votes. Ballots are going to come out the same every time. So the notion of a recount in a forensically destructive process doesn’t work very well.
What we saw there — what I saw there — was a chain of custody in all cases that was broken. [It] was broken for the mail-in ballots, the drop box ballots, the Election Day USB card flash drives.
Stenstrom said all procedures defined by the Delaware County Board of Elections regarding the chain of custody for ballots were not followed.
(nationalistreview) – Biden Team to have access to over $6 million in taxpayer dollars…
In what has been perceived as a disappointing sign from conservative commentators, an official from the Trump Administration has officially reached out to the Biden “transition team” to make available to them funds, services, and office space that is granted to the President-elect. The news comes in the form of a letter (provided below) from the General Services Administration to the Joe Biden team.
Joe Biden’s team will now receive $6,300,000 to carry out his transition and an additional $1,000,000 to “provide appointee orientation sessions.”
Some have taken this move as the administrations acceptance of the possibility that they will not retain the White House. Emily Murphy, the administrator of the United States General Services Administration, dispatched the letter that alerted Joe Biden to this development.
People may be inclined to read into some of Murphy’s word choice, notably that she “came to [this] decision independently” based oon the law and available facts. “I was never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official—including those who work at the White House or GSA—with regard to the substance or timing of my decision.”
Trump, however, has indicated publicly that he personally recommended that Murphy take this action, tweeting:
“I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.”
…fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.
Murphy continues, “I did, however, receive threats online, by phone, and by mail directed at my safety, my family, my staff, and even my pets in an effort to coerce me into making this determination prematurely. Even in the face of thousands of threats, I always remained committed to upholding the law.”
She reiterates later that her decision was not made out of “fear or favoritism,” but instead believes that the law requires her to “ascertain…the apparent president-elect.”
“As you know, the GSA Administrator does not pick or certify the winner of a presidential election. Instead the GSA Administrator’s role under the Act is extremely narrow: to make resources and services available in connection with a presidential transition. As stated, because of recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results, I have determined that you may access the post-election resources and services described in Section 3 of the Act upon request. The actual winner of the presidential election will be determined by the electoral process detailed in the Constitution.”
(informationliberation) – Video shared Monday by Perez Hilton on Tiktok which went viral all over social media said to show police in California abusing a man for defying Governor Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus curfew orders is actually from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in October.
The incident happened on October 11 and you can see the same bearded man being arrested at the 2:28 mark in this video report from FOX6 News Milwaukee.
(breitbart) – Former Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly set to announce this week that Tony Blinken, who supported the idea of “Russia collusion,” would be his Secretary of State.
President-elect Joe Biden intends to name his longtime adviser Antony Blinken as secretary of State, according to three people familiar with the matter, setting out to assemble his cabinet even before Donald Trump concedes defeat.
In addition, Jake Sullivan, formerly one of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides, is likely to be named Biden’s national security adviser, according to two people familiar with the matter. An announcement is expected Tuesday, the people said.
Blinken, who served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security advisor under President Barack Obama, has also been a New York Times opinion writer and a “global affairs analyst” for CNN. In that capacity, he supported the “Russia collusion” hoax.
As Breitbart News reported in 2017, Blinken told CNN: “The president’s ongoing collusion with Russia’s plans is really striking, intentional or not.” He said that Russia had sown doubt about American elections and institutions.
(Subsequently, an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.)
Blinken also apologized earlier this year to left-wing anti-Israel radical Linda Sarsour, regarded by many critics (even on the left) as an antisemite, after the Biden campaign tried to distance itself from her views.
He is also married to Evan Ryan, a former aide to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. Ryan worked for Clinton at a time when Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret Williams, acknowledged accepting a campaign donation from entrepreneur Johnny Chien Chuen Chung.
Chung said that the donation was meant to help Clinton pay for Christmas receptions for the Democratic National Committee at the White House, in exchange for “VIP treatment for a delegation of visiting Chinese businessmen,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Biden is expected to name several potential Cabinet nominees in the coming days.
(breitbart) – President Donald Trump’s legal team distanced themselves from attorney Sidney Powell on Sunday evening, noting that she did not represent the president, either as part of the team or in his personal capacity.
In a statement attributed to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis, the team said: “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”
A source who spoke to Breitbart News on background suggested that the team had hoped to work with her, but that Powell’s public claims had gone beyond the scope of the evidence they had seen and believed they could prove in court.
Powell had pursued a theory that Dominion voting machines, operating with Smartmatic software, were manipulable and had been responsible for switching votes from Trump to Democratic challenger Joe Biden. She also alleged that Dominion had worked with foreign governments, including Venezuela, and produced an affidavit purporting to support that allegation.
She had not yet provided evidence that votes had actually been changed, however, and has faced increasing public criticism.
Powell, an outspoken conservative, gained wide acclaim for her representation of former National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.), who withdrew his guilty plea after being prosecuted for lying to the FBI.
Flynn’s previous lawyers had negotiated a plea agreement, but after new evidence emerged of conflicts of interest at the Department of Justice (DOJ), he asked Powell to take up his defense. The DOJ is trying to drop the prosecution, but the judge in the case has not agreed.
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 27: Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Briefing Room of the White House on September 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump is preparing for the first presidential debate with former Vice President and Democratic Nominee Joe Biden on September 29th in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)
(breitbart) – Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that President Donald Trump’s legal team has been a “national embarrassment.”
Anchor George Stephanopoulos said, “Last night we saw Pat Toomey, the Senator for Pennsylvania say it’s time for the president to enable this transition. It’s time for the president to concede. The president’s response was to attack Pat Toomey on Twitter. Is it finally time for this to end?
Christie said, “Yes, and here’s the reason why. The president has had an opportunity to access the courts, and I said to you starting at 2:30 a.m. on Thursday, if you have got the evidence of fraud, present it. What’s happened here, quite frankly, the conduct of the president’s legal team has been a national embarrassment. Sidney Powell accusing Brian Kemp of a crime on television, yet being unwilling to go on TV and defend and lay out the evidence that she supposedly has. This is outrageous by any lawyer and notice, George. They won’t do it inside the courtroom. They allege fraud outside the courtroom, but when they go inside the courtroom, they don’t plead fraud, and they don’t argue fraud. This is what I was concerned about at 2:30 in the morning on Wednesday night.”
He added, “Listen, I have been a supporter of the president. I voted for him twice, but elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen. You have an obligation to present the evidence. The evidence has not been presented, and you must conclude. As Tucker Carlson even concluded the other night, that if you are unwilling to come forward and present the evidence, it must mean the evidence doesn’t exist. That’s what I was concerned about on election night, and I remain concerned today. I think it’s wrong. I think what you have heard a lot of Republicans start to say this. I said it on election night. I hope more say it going forward because the country is what has to matter the most. As much as I’m a strong Republican and I love my party, it’s the country that has to come first.”
