Patriot Pony

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EDITOR’S NOTE—This section is reserved as an editorial and may not necessarily reflect the policy of this publication.

There’s a guy on Rumble who’s spouting some serious allegations that we are living in a US Military Occupancy. Derek Johnson, a military veteran says that the military occupancy is defined in the Law of War Manual. He says it is also paralleled with the Military Justice Act of 2016.

“We are a nation of laws and orders and we have a Constitution that runs this country,” said Johnson in a Ruble video. “We don’t have honesty. We don’t have integrity. We haven’t had accountability. We haven’t had responsibility in many, many, many years. We’ve had a lot of people for their own agendas and own narratives. That’s being ousted.”

Johnson says Joe Biden is not currently president and has never been president. He says the military is in control and is fighting battles such as child trafficking, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and money laundering. He states that a continuation of government had to be in place for the people to see— such as a visual president.

“Donald Trump was a military plug that was planted to be the Commander in Chief for the military occupancy,” said Johnson who cited the 1,236-page Law of War Manual. “When you get to about page seven, come holler at your boy because it’s boring and it’s tough to read and you’re going to need someone like me to break it down for you from the military side of things.” Is all of this just nonsense? Is it just someone who met with Donald Trump recently and wants attention? You be the judge: Video

Election integrity volunteers 'afraid' to attend recount after Michigan AG threatens prosecution

Twitter files unmask censorship collaboration with feds, earlier effort to hamper Trump account

Many of the volunteers, seeking to "scrutinize" Michigan's election process in the aftermath of two controversial ballot proposals, melted away after Democratic AG warned of law enforcement response to possible "criminal acts." Former president was being “visibility

By Aaron Kliegman

An apparent threat by Michigan's Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel to arrest and prosecute local activists promoting election integrity and anti-voter fraud efforts caused many of them to steer clear of a contentious monitoring effort out of fear of being targeted by the government, according to a Michigan attorney deeply involved in the situation.

Across Michigan on Wednesday, dozens of counties and hundreds of precincts began a recount for two controversial ballot proposals that were approved by voters on Nov. 8.

The first measure in question is Proposal 2, which establishes early voting, expands access to absentee voting and preempts Republican efforts to enact more stringent voter ID rules. The other measure is Proposal 3, which enshrines abortion rights in the state's constitution.

The recount was triggered by the efforts of Election Integrity Force (EIF), a group that says it seeks "transparent and trusted" elections. The effort is unlikely to reverse the proposals, which were approved by comfortable margins.

Still, volunteer election challengers affiliated with EIF showed up to observe the recount, requesting access to look for errors or irregularities on ballots and ballot boxes. Daniel Hartman, an attorney in Michigan who's been working with EIF and closely monitoring the recount effort, said the recount is meant to "scrutinize" Michigan's election process more so than to overturn the proposals.

"There was a great turnout on Wednesday," he told Just the News. "This was a group of unpaid volunteers who appeared from all walks of life and peacefully assembled with short notice to participate in the recount process. They got involved because it was the right thing to do."

EIF released a statement Wednesday night claiming the first day of the recount revealed "evidence of ballot box tampering" without providing evidence. The group's executive director, Sandy Kiesel, echoed those allegations in a video message on Thursday.

While most recounts were smooth, volunteer challengers filed police reports in multiple precincts when their efforts seeking access to the ballots were rebuffed, claiming election workers were violating the law by denying their requests.

In Jackson County, for example, challengers observing the Proposal 3 recount asked to inspect election equipment and to see the entire ballot, not just the proposal section, according to the MLive news site, which noted they were denied because the recount only covers the proposal votes. One challenger claimed the election workers rebuffing them was illegal and reported the incident to law enforcement.

Despite the incident, county elections director Jennifer Crews maintained the recount "went really well" overall.

There were reports of disturbances in other areas such as Wayne County, where a challenger and an election supervisor argued over the recount procedure. The challenger maintained a calm tone but threatened to take legal action.

These incidents were reported to Nessel's office, which proceeded to issue a statement on Wednesday night.

"Recent reports of threatening behavior and interference at locations where recounts are taking place cause unnecessary disturbances and may even rise to the level of criminal acts," said Nessel. "My department is monitoring the situation closely and will not hesitate to act should circumstances demand a response from law enforcement."

Supporters of the recount seemed to read the statement as a threat.

"The attorney general without any grounds issued a press release that she's investigating the people participating in the recount for harassing and interfering with election workers," said Hartman.

He described how significantly less people showed up to support the recount on Thursday, noting sarcastically the drop-off wasn't because people "suddenly lost interest." (Continued on page 23)

filtered” well before being banned.

ByJohn Solomon

Twitter executives engaged in extensive collaboration with federal law enforcement as they escalated censorship activities on the platform during the 2020 election, including an earlier effort to hamper Donald Trump’s social media visibility prior to banning his account.

The explosive new revelations were made public by independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday night, facilitated by Twitter‘s new owner, Elon Musk.

The files make clear that the FBI flagged specific content for censorship and that Twitter executives met not only with the bureau, but also with teams from Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence as the war against “misinformation” escalated it in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election.

Earlier Friday, Taibbi also released files detailing the momentous decision to boot Trump from the platform after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, while he was still America’s 45th president.

Later in the evening, the journalist released internal communications confirming Twitter executives also engaged in earlier effort to hamper Trump’s visibility and engagement on the platform in the final days of the presidential election. “Trump was being ‘visibility filtered’ as late as a week before the election,” Taibbi wrote, attaching contemporaneous internal communications that validated the claim. “Here, senior execs didn’t appear to have a particular violation, but still worked fast to make sure a fairly anodyne Trump tweet couldn’t be ‘replied to, shared, or liked.’” Once completed with the action, a Twitter executive marveled about how quickly the platform was able to censor America’s sitting president, the communications show. "Very well done on speed folks, what this is all designed for and a huge positive for the platform," one employee wrote. In another effort targeting Trump before his suspension, Twitter employees discussed putting a “mail -in voting is safe” warning label on a Trump tweet about a postal screwup in Ohio, before realizing “the events took place,” which meant the tweet was “factually accurate,” Taibbi wrote. Many efforts were given to monitor Republican claims of election meddling, even when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee made a joke about filing fake ballots from his deceased relatives. “The group declares Huck’s an ‘edge case,” and though one notes, ‘we don’t make exceptions for jokes or satire,’ they ultimately decide to leave him be, because ‘we’ve poked enough bears,’” Taibbi narrated. Some censorship efforts targeting specific American Republicans came at the behest of the FBI, the files indicated. “Here, the FBI sends reports about a pair of tweets, the second of which involves a former Tippecanoe County, Indiana Councilor and Republican named @JohnBasham claiming ‘Between 2% and 25% of Ballots by Mail are Being Rejected for Errors.,’” Taibbi noted. Such contact with federal law enforcement became routine in the final weeks of the election, with executives talking about weekly meetings with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and even the office of the top intelligence executive in government. One internal (Continued on page 23)

The Patriot Pony, December 5, 2022 'They better be retaining lawyers': Ex-Twitter execs

face GOP gauntlet as Musk exposes old regime

Latest "Twitter Files" dump calls into question former CEO's testimony under oath that Twitter doesn't "shadow ban." Jim Jordan's Judiciary Committee plans to investigate ex-FBI Twitter lawyer's communications with bureau ahead of 2020 election.

ByGreg Piper

Republican lawmakers are calling for hearings and criminal inquiries amid the steady release of government emails and internal Twitter communications suggesting a coordinated effort to squelch disfavored narratives on COVID-19 and elections and mislead Congress about the nature and extent of Twitter's content moderation decisions.

Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) called on Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to hold a hearing on Big Tech censorship in light of the "Twitter Files" that new owner Elon Musk is sharing with independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

The first batch shows Twitter's process for censoring the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop expose was "haphazard at best," with multiple employees questioning the "hacked materials" policy basis, Wicker told Cantwell Thursday. It's clear now that "Twitter coordinated with a presidential campaign and [the Democratic National Committee] to suppress speech."

Senate Democrats can continue to block hearings even with the surprise defection Friday of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (IAriz.), who said she won't caucus with Republicans. Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock's runoff reelection victory gives Democrats 50 seats even if Sinema doesn't caucus with them either.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said former Twitter Trust and Safety Head Yoel Roth, who quit two weeks after Musk's completed purchase, "flat-out lied" in an affidavit to the Federal Election Commission about not communicating with Democrats or the Biden campaign to censor reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop. The FEC accepted Twitter's explanation that it blocked "potentially hacked content" from the laptop "for bona fide commercial reasons" and to enforce its policies. The Twitter Files show the company had no concrete basis to believe the materials were hacked.

Roth "and everyone who lied under oath, they better be retaining lawyers" in the face of "real civil and criminal jeopardy," Cruz told Fox News. He's "working closely" with House Republicans to "haul these people before Congress to testify under oath" about their prior representations when the GOP takes over next year.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R -Wyo.) told Cowboy State Daily she thought the Twitter Files show "government wrongdoing."

The House Oversight Committee should "investigate why the Hunter Biden laptop was alleged to have been a Russian-generated falsehood," Lummis said.

The "accumulation of accusations pointed at the FBI's Washington, D.C., bureau" is also worthy of "serious investigation by Congress," she said, apparently referring to the recent deposition of FBI agent Elvis Chan in the federal-Big Tech collusion lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana.

Rep. Jim Jordan (ROhio), who is taking the House Judiciary Committee gavel next year, told Fox News Friday the Twitter Files may not even be complete because "the guy vetting the release of this information is the same guy" who was a key player in the FBI's nowdiscredited TrumpRussia investigation.

Musk fired Deputy General Counsel James Baker, who was previously FBI general counsel, Tuesday for covertly reviewing the first batch of the Twitter Files before they were given to ployees disagreed with & manipulated trends against conservatives ... They can’t get away with this."

Jordan compared Twitter's internal labels on conservative accounts to the "threat tags" the FBI put on investigations of parents who protested school board meetings last year.

Roth, Gadde and Dorsey also served on the secret "Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support" committee, which made moderation decisions for the most sensitive accounts.

Taibbi, the journalist said. Baker's explanation for doing so was "unconvincing," Musk tweeted.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley dubbed Baker "the Kevin Bacon of the Russian collusion scandals," who brought "the same signature bias that characterized the Russian investigations" when Twitter hired him in 2020.

"I really want to talk to" Chan, the recently deposed FBI agent, about the weekly briefings he led with social media companies ahead of the 2020 election, Jordan told Fox News. "Was Jim Baker the guy he was briefing? ... I want to know how cozy that was."

Jordan promised that Republicans will work to "fully expose everything" when they take the majority next year. He wants to know if any of the 51 ex-intelligence officials who called the laptop Russian disinformation on the eve of the 2020 election were talking to Baker at Twitter.

The latest batch of Twitter Files, reported Thursday night by Weiss, suggests then-CEO Jack Dorsey at best resorted to semantic hairsplitting when he told Congress in a 2018 hearing that Twitter did not surreptitiously limit the reach of right-of -center politicians and influencers, colloquially known as "shadowbanning."

Legal policy chief Vijaya Gadde also told the public in a 2018 blog post that Twitter doesn't shadowban and "certainly" not on the basis of "political viewpoints or ideology," but defined the practice as hiding rather than limiting the reach of tweets. Dorsey later affirmed that claim.

Weiss' materials show that Stanford medical professor Jay Bhattacharya, a coauthor of the antilockdown Great Barrington Declaration, and

(Continued from page 22)

Twitter communication, for instance, referred to a "weekly sync with FBI/ DHS/DNI" regarding election security issues. Once Twitter’s extensive censorship activities exploded into the public with the controversial decision to temporarily block stories from the New York Post about Hunter Biden’s laptop — falsely claiming it was hacked materials — Twitter executives realized they had created an issue of trust in the marketplace in October 2020, the newly released communications showed. "Hacked Materials exploded. We blocked the NYP story, then we unblocked it (but said the opposite), then said we unblocked it… and now we’re in a messy situation where our policy is in shambles, comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots, and we’re refactoring an exceedingly complex policy 18 days out from the election,” one executive wrote. Taibbi also raised the possibility of disparate treatment based on political affiliation.

He noted while there was extensive focus on Republican election fraud claims in the Twitter communications, similar ones from Democrats were reviewed but left uncensored including a hashtag suggesting a Trump-friendly Supreme Court might “#StealOurVotes.”

“There are multiple instances of involving proBiden tweets warning Trump “may try to steal the election” that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives,” Taibbi wrote.

Chaya Raichik, who runs the conservative Libs of Tik Tok account, appeared on a "trends blacklist" that limited their tweets' reach through "visibility filtering."

"Did @jack lie to Congress?" Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) tweeted, tagging Dorsey's account. Prominent conservatives, including Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell, also accused Dorsey of perjury.

The purported "conspiracy theorists" were right, presumptive incoming House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) tweeted. "Twitter did blacklist/suppress accounts their leftist em-

(Continued from page 22)

"Many of the volunteers were afraid to come because they're afraid of being investigated by the attorney general," he said. "A lot of firsttimers were especially scared."

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, also released a statement on the alleged disturbances.

"The local, county, and state election officials overseeing the recounts," said Benson, "will not tolerate attempts to intimidate them, interfere with the recount process, or illegally access any election equipment or materials not explicitly allowed by law."

Hartman wasn't alone in taking issue with government efforts to prevent election integrity advocates from fully challenging election results.

"It is not a crime to question or investigate an election contest," said Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who chairs the Election Integrity Network. "That is part of the statutory framework of every election code in the country."

In Michigan, however, some election officials have questioned the motives of EIF, which has pushed unproven claims of widespread election fraud since 2020. For example, Tony Daunt, a Republican who chairs the bipartisan Board of State Canvassers, which approved the recount, expressed concern that the effort was meant "to get in and start filing subpoenas or forensic audit nonsense."

According to Hartman, however, the recount is about citizens understanding and having faith in their electoral process.

"All we want to do is look at what's going on," he told Just the News. "I'm not a paranoid person, but the entire system feels like it's rigged and out of our hands. That's not being an election denier. That's being a concerned citizen."