This Country Is Falling Fast With The Corruption Going On And On And No One Gets Punished .
Who presides over the impeachment trial of a state Supreme Court justice if the entire state Supreme Court is being impeached?
It’s an absurd constitutional hypothetical West Virginians are left to grapple with, after the West Virginia House of Delegates Judiciary Committee drafted articles of impeachment against four justices on the state’s highest court.
Five justices sit on the state Supreme Court in West Virginia. The state legislature has drafted articles of impeachment against Chief Justice Margaret Workman and Justices Robin Jean Davis, Beth Walker, and Allen Loughry. The court’s fifth justice, Menis Ketchum, retired in late July. Ketchum will plead guilty to two federal corruption charges on Aug. 29.
Loughry was placed on unpaid administrative leave in June after a state commission lodged a 32-count complaint against him, alleging pervasive violations of the state ethics code. He has since been indicted in federal court for fraud, witness tampering, and making false statements to investigators. (RELATED: First Justice Suspended From Scandal-Ridden State Supreme Court)
The remaining three justices — Workman, Davis, and Walker — face impeachment for wasting government resources and failing to effectively administer the state courts. All three spent large sums of taxpayer dollars on lavish improvements to their chambers in the state capital, which cumulatively totaled almost $750,000, and allegedly abused state travel resources. Workman and Davis also allegedly authorized compensation for other state judges in excess of the amounts allowed by West Virginia law.
“There appears to be, based on the evidence before us, an atmosphere that has engulfed the court of cavalier indifference to the expenditure of taxpayer funds, to the protection of taxpayer-paid assets, and an almost incomprehensible arrogance that for some reason they are not a coequal branch but a superior branch of government,” Delegate John Shott said during a judiciary committee hearing on Aug. 7.
West Virginia’s constitution provides that the chief justice shall preside over impeachment trials in the state Senate. As Chief Justice Workman herself, however, is subject to impeachment, she is ineligible to preside, as are the rest of her colleagues.
Workman appointed Cabell County Circuit Judge Paul Farrell to the high court on an interim basis late Friday. Farrell will serve in Loughry’s seat, pending the election of a successor in November. Farrell will also preside over impeachment proceedings in the legislature — though Walker disputes his power to do so.
In a short statement issued late Friday, Walker argued against Farrell’s installation as the presiding officer for impeachment.
“I believe it is improper to designate any justice as acting chief justice for impeachment proceedings in which I or my colleagues may have an interest and that have not yet commenced in the Senate,” she wrote.
Prior to this summer’s abrupt turn of events in West Virginia, Davis was cited in the press for possible ethics violations in unrelated matters. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in March 2017 that a series of contributions made to her 2012 re-election campaign strongly resemble an illegal straw donation scheme, conducted at the behest of an attorney defending a $92 million civil judgment in the state Supreme Court. (RELATED: New Evidence Of Illegal Donations To West Virginia Judge Emerges)
That attorney, Michael Fuller of the McHugh Fuller Law Group, also purchased the Davis family private jet in December 2011.
Davis issued a ruling in 2014 preserving a large portion of Fuller’s $92 million award.
GOP Gov. Jim Justice will appoint new justices if any of the court’s current members are impeached.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/12/west-virginia-impeachment-supreme-court/
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FIRST JUSTICE SUSPENDED FROM SCANDAL-RIDDEN STATE SUPREME COURT
West Virginia’s Judicial Investigation Commission cited state Supreme Court Justice Allen Loughry for 32 alleged violation of the state ethics code, prompting Loughry’s colleagues to suspend him from his official duties.
The embattled justice has been implicated in a range of alleged wrongdoing, including abuse of state resources, lying under oath, and hiding information from colleagues.
The complaint charges that Loughry “engaged in a pattern and practice of lying and using his public office for private gain.”
The details set forth allege Loughery lied pervasively about the procurement of new furnishings for his chambers, telling local news anchors, radio talk show hosts, newspaper editors, and members of the West Virginia state legislature that he was not involved in the lavish renovations of his office. Emails, eyewitness testimony, and other records show he was intimately involved in the selection of a $32,000 suede sectional, and a $7,500 wooden medallion with a county-by-county rendering of the state.
The total cost of the renovation ran over $350,000. (RELATED: New Evidence Of Illegal Campaign Donations To West Virginia Judge Emerges)
The complaint also identifies some 12 instances in which Loughery used state transportation for personal reasons, and notes the justice used state transportation some 148 times without logging his activity. He later attempted to exempt the justices from transportation disclosure requirements.
In April state auditors discovered Loughry removed a state-owned antique desk to his private residence. The so-called Cass Gilbert desk, named for an architect most famous for designing the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., in his possession is valued at almost $50,000.
The justice also concealed two federal subpoenas related to court business from the other four justices on the court. The subpoenas were issued in December 2017 and February 2018, when Loughry was serving as chief justice. He was removed as chief on a 4-1 vote when the other justices were made aware of the subpoenas on Feb. 16, 2018.
The complaint butresses its allegations with lengthy quotes from his book “Don’t Buy Another Vote, I Won’t Pay For A Landslide,” a meticulous history of political corruption in the state.
“Of all the criminal politicians in West Virginia, the group that shatters the confidence of the people the most is a corrupt judiciary,” he wrote.
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NEW EVIDENCE OF ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN DONATIONS TO WEST VIRGINIA JUDGE EMERGES
New evidence has emerged suggesting a corporate entity funneled thousands of dollars to a West Virginia Supreme Court judge’s re-election campaign at the urging of an attorney who had a major case pending on the high court’s docket.
A source involved in a series of campaign contributions made to West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Robin Jean Davis told The Daily Caller News Foundation that they believed a corporate entity may have donated at least $6,000 to her 2012 re-election campaign in the names of various people connected to the company, as a personal favor for a friend of the firm’s president.
TheDCNF first reported on a series of suspicious campaign contributions made to the Davis re-election effort in August 2016.
Contribution records reviewed by TheDCNF show that six individuals from Plant City, Fla., contributed to Davis’s 2012 campaign. All six donations were made in the amount of $1,000, the maximum allowed by West Virginia law. Each donation was made on Jan. 12, 2012.
None of these individuals has an extensive history of political activism. It is unclear what connection, if any, the Plant City donors have to West Virginia judicial politics.
The only connection the donors have to each other is their relationship with Steve Edwards, president of a Plant City landscaping company called S&O Greenworks. Though no contributions were made in Edwards’ name, several came from individuals close to him and his company.
His wife, Jennifer Edwards, appears to have made two contributions to the Davis re-election effort. One contribution was made in her married name, and another was made in the name Jennifer Schlichenmayer, Edwards’s maiden name. Two other S&O Greenworks employees also made donations. Additional contributions came from two individuals who live on Steve Edwards’ street.
One of these individuals told TheDCNF that they did not make a donation to the Davis campaign, and that any donation made in their name was submitted without their knowledge or permission. The source asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly about the donations.
The individual claims that the first time they learned a donation to Davis was made in their name was in TheDCNF’s Aug. 4 report. The source said that they are not politically active and had never heard of Robin Jean Davis before reading TheDCNF’s report.
“No,” the source replied when asked if they donated to the Davis campaign. “I have never been into politics. I don’t know anyone like [Justice Davis.]”
The source said they believed the donation was made by Steve Edwards using S&O Greenworks funds at the behest of a Mississippi-based attorney named Michael Fuller. Edwards and Fuller have a longstanding personal relationship.
Fuller is a partner at the McHugh Fuller Law Group, and argued a major case before Justice Davis in 2014. The case concerned a $91.5 million judgement Fuller had secured for his client against a nursing home in a trial court in West Virginia.
Other lawyers at his firm, as well as their relatives, also made $1,000 donations to the Davis campaign on Jan. 12, 2012, the same day the Plant City contributions were made. During this same period, Fuller purchased a private jet from Davis, as TheDCNF documented in the Aug. 4 report.
Davis later wrote an opinion preserving much of a $91.5 million judgement Fuller secured in a trial court.
The source said Steve Edwards once informed them that he would use company funds to do a favor for Fuller, though they did not know what the funds were being used for.
“I have to cut a couple of checks out of our account for something that [Fuller’s] doing, but he’s going to reimburse us,” the source said, quoting Edwards. “I remember thinking ‘This guy’s a multi-millionaire, why does he need to borrow money from us?’”
The source added they believed the funds expended by S&O Greenworks at Fuller’s urging totaled approximately $10,000. They further claimed that other contributions emanating from S&O employees were likely made at Edwards’ orders or by Edwards himself.
The Campaign Legal Center’s Paul Ryan, an expert on campaign finance laws, previously told TheDCNF that the fact posture of this case suggests the existence of a straw donor racket. A straw donation occurs when individuals use another’s money to make political contributions in their own name or in the names of others. Straw donations are illegal.
Ryan did not pass a definitive judgement on the facts of this case, and emphasized he is not an expert on the campaign finance laws particular to West Virginia.
“$1,000 contributions are highly unusual from people of modest means in my experience,” he told TheDCNF. “Particularly when the contribution is going to someone in another state, when the contribution is coming from someone with no track record of involving themselves as political contributors, those are all red flags to me.”
“I wouldn’t refer to straw donors as a common practice,” he added. “It’s always unusual, it’s always a big deal, in my opinion, and I want to see strong enforcement to prevent use of straw donors.”
The source’s allegations concerning the use of S&O funds for political contributions also raises legal questions, as does Fuller’s alleged promise to reimburse the company for the expenditures.
Steve Edwards and Michael Fuller did not respond to TheDCNF’s inquiries about this story.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) terminated special agent Peter Strzok on Friday, according to reports.
Strzok’s attorney, Aitan Goelman, says the firing was ordered by FBI Deputy Director David L. Bowdich, after the department which oversees personal disciplinary matters ruled the disgraced FBI agent would face a “demotion and 60-day suspension.”
Strzok was one primary subject in the highly anticipated Justice Department inspector general report released in July on the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) handling of Hillary Clinton email investigation, which found the now-fired agent possessed a “biased state of mind” and a “willingness to take action” during the probe.
Text messages exchanged between Strzok and then-FBI lawyer and his alleged lover, Lisa Page, showed the now-fired agent disdained Donald Trump’s candidacy during the 2016 presidential election. Among the explosive exchanges, Page sent a text message to Strzok asking “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president right? Right?!” Strzok replied, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
Justice Department officials wrote Strzok’s anti-Trump bias may have caused inaction following the discovery of Clinton emails on the laptop of disgraced New York Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner in September 2016.
“Text messages of FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok indicated that he, McCabe, and Priestap discussed the Weiner laptop on September 28. Strzok said that he initially planned to send a team to New York to review the emails, but a conference all with [New York Office] was scheduled instead,” According to the timeline laid out in the inspector general’s report.
The report further states: “Additional discussions took place on October 3 and 4, 2016. However, after October 4, we found no evidence that anyone associated with the Midyear investigation, including the entire leadership team at FBI Headquarters, took any action on the Weiner laptop issue until the week of October 24, and then did so only after the Weiner case agent expressed concerns to [Southern District of New York], prompting SDNY to contact the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) on October 21 to raise concerns about the lack of action.”
Rather than probe the newly discovered emails, Strzok opted to further investigate possible collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. “[We] did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the [Clinton investigation]-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias,” the report said.
Despite casting “a cloud over the entire FBI investigation,” the inspector general report concluded there existed no evidence to suggest Strzok’s decisions during the Clinton probe were tainted by political bias.
Goelman issued a highly critical statement after the watchdog report’s release, describing its conclusion as both “bizarre” and “critically flawed,” asserting his client had not acted on any political biases.
“In facts, all facts contained in the report lead to the conclusion that the delay was caused by a variety of factors and miscommunications that had nothing to do with Special Agent Strzok’s political views,” Goelman said in a statement. “The report itself provides indisputable evidence that, when informed that Weiner’s laptop contained Clinton emails, Strzok immediately had the matter pursued by two of his most qualified and aggressive investigators.”
Following the discovery of Strzok’s anti-trump text messages in the summer of 2017, the 22-year FBI veteran was reassigned from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to the agency’s Human Resources department.
On July 12, Strzok publicly testified before House Judiciary and House Oversight Committee members over his role in the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference, pushing back on allegations his personal views of President Trump impacted the outcome of the Clinton email probe. “The suggestion that I’m in some dark chamber somewhere in the FBI would somehow cast aside all of these procedures, all of these safeguards, and somehow be able to do this is astounding to me — it simply couldn’t happen,” Strzok told congressional investigators.
Although Strzok is no longer an employee of the FBI, his legal troubles are far from over. One week after the disgraced FBI agent’s public testimony, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) told reporters that Page’s closed-door testimony yielded new leads in its investigation into the FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign and handling of Hillary Clinton email probe. “I think there are significant differences between their testimony about important material facts. She gave us a lot of new information that we didn’t have before. That will lead us to ask for some more people to make some more requests for information we do not yet have,” Ratcliffe said. “On many cases, she admits that the text messages mean exactly what they say as opposed to agent Strzok, who thinks all misinterpreted his own words on any text message that might be negative.”
During his testimony, Strzok repeatedly claimed the anti-Trump text messages, including some describing President Trump as an “idiot” and a “disaster”, did not result in political bias during the Clinton or Russia investigations. The veteran FBI agent lamented the toxicity surrounding his circumstances, telling lawmakers that his testimony was evidence that a sustained Russian campaign to meddle in America’s political process was proving successful. “I have the utmost respect for Congress’ oversight role, but I truly believe that today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart.”
Strzok and Page have frequently drawn the ire of President Trump and Republicans lawmakers over there explicit bias exhibited during the Clinton email probe.
“Russian Collusion with the Trump Campaign, one of the most successful in history, is a TOTAL HOAX. The Democrats paid for the phony and discredited Dossier which was, along with Comey, McCabe, Strzok and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, used to begin the Witch Hunt. Disgraceful!” The president tweeted on August 1.

Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
Russian Collusion with the Trump Campaign, one of the most successful in history, is a TOTAL HOAX. The Democrats paid for the phony and discredited Dossier which was, along with Comey, McCabe, Strzok and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, used to begin the Witch Hunt. Disgraceful!
10:01 AM – Aug 1, 2018
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”Will the FBI ever recover it’s once stellar reputation, so badly damaged by Comey, McCabe, Peter S and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, and other top officials now dismissed or fired? So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!” The Commander-in-Chief wrote on Twitter over the weekend.

Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
…..Will the FBI ever recover it’s once stellar reputation, so badly damaged by Comey, McCabe, Peter S and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, and other top officials now dismissed or fired? So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!
9:18 AM – Aug 11, 2018
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FILE – In this Nov. 7, 2016 file photo Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reads a letter from New England Patriots NFL football coach Bill Belichick to a campaign rally in Manchester, N.H. In the six New England states that voted for Hillary Clinton, some Patriots fans are trying to reconcile their team allegiance with their distaste for Republican President Trump. The New York billionaire has made it no secret he’s good friends with team owner Robert Kraft, head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. New England faces the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl on Feb. 5, 2017 in Houston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File) ORG XMIT: BX704
Millionaire NFL players are once again furious that President Trump has spoken out against the protests of players who either kneel, or raise a fist during the playing of the national anthem.
Even as the NFL’s ratings continue to crash, several members of the Miami Dolphins took a knee during the national anthem, and one raised a militant black power fist during this week’s pre-season game. Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills and receiver Albert Wilson took a knee during the anthem, while defensive end Robert Quinn raised his fist as the nation’s theme played.
The league quickly put out a statement insisting that “all player and non-player personnel on the field at that time are expected to stand,” but clearly the players don’t agree and the rule seems totally toothless.
Meanwhile, President Trump spoke out about the renewed NFL protests delivering two tweets saying:
The NFL players are at it again – taking a knee when they should be standing proudly for the National Anthem. Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their “outrage” at something that most of them are unable to define. They make a fortune doing what they love…
Be happy, be cool! A football game, that fans are paying soooo much money to watch and enjoy, is no place to protest. Most of that money goes to the players anyway. Find another way to protest. Stand proudly for your National Anthem or be Suspended Without Pay!
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
The NFL players are at it again – taking a knee when they should be standing proudly for the National Anthem. Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their “outrage” at something that most of them are unable to define. They make a fortune doing what they love……
…..Be happy, be cool! A football game, that fans are paying soooo much money to watch and enjoy, is no place to protest. Most of that money goes to the players anyway. Find another way to protest. Stand proudly for your National Anthem or be Suspended Without Pay!
Naturally, the president’s criticism did not sit well with many players and members of the left-wing sports media.
Leading the attack on the president was the inventor of the anthem protests himself, former player Colin Kaepernick, who praised Dolphins player Albert Wilson for taking a knee:
Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan was also triggered by Trump’s tweets:
cameron jordan
✔@camjordan94
Guy who won the presidential election… how about we get a statement on the “unite the right” rally 2 being held in DC this weekend… a yr after the first one in Charlottesville???
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
The NFL players are at it again – taking a knee when they should be standing proudly for the National Anthem. Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their “outrage” at something that most of them are unable to define. They make a fortune doing what they love……
Only way to say it. What a Goober. He is who I thought he was. Guy is 70+ yr old acting out in what was once the highest respected political position, as a overly insecure prepubescent child…
He won’t govern himself, give him a mentor? Right, members of his cabinet left on their own accord or were dismissed accordingly… But what do I know I’m just a guy who should stick to football
With Donald Trump immersing himself in the business of the NFL once again, I fully expect the majority of NFL owners to act in a manner that echos their previous leadership on this issue:
I wonder if people have caught up to Trump’s con game yet. He doesn’t care if players are protesting or not. He cares how his MAGA base reacts to it so that’s why he keeps egging it on. It’s a distraction to keep his dumb as bricks fan base from seeing how terrible a Prez he is.
Robert Littal
✔@BSO
That’s always been the con game from Trump he knows the people who voted for him are dumb. He doesn’t even like them. But a con man always knows what audience to manipulate. It’s basically a cult at this point. They are puppets and Trump just pulling their strings
Protesting NFL players now controlling narrative. They knew Trump would tweet if they protested, bringing attention to cause. It got him off his own message of tariffs, “witch hunt” blah, blah
By saying they they can’t “define” what they’re protesting, media is now asking them.
In another case, it appears that being an NBC News “White House correspondent” means pushing agendas instead of reporting on anything if the tweet by NBC’s Geoff Bennett is any indication:
Geoff Bennett
✔@GeoffRBennett
While Trump is renewing attacks on NFL players, there’s still no public repudiation of the white supremacists/nationalists who are set to rally in front of the White House on Sunday. Sometimes what Trump *doesn’t say is as illustrative and instructive as what he does say.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
…..Be happy, be cool! A football game, that fans are paying soooo much money to watch and enjoy, is no place to protest. Most of that money goes to the players anyway. Find another way to protest. Stand proudly for your National Anthem or be Suspended Without Pay!
All your base are belong to us. A leaked memo circulating among Senate Democrats contains a host of bonkers authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms, purportedly as a way to get tough on Russian bots and fake news. To save American trust in “our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets,” it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including “comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation” of the sort enacted in the E.U.
Titled “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,” the draft policy paper—penned by Sen. Mark Warner and leaked by an unknown source to Axios—the paper starts out by noting that Russians have long spread disinformation, including when “the Soviets tried to spread ‘fake news’ denigrating Martin Luther King” (here he fails to mention that the Americans in charge at the time did the same). But NOW IT’S DIFFERENT, because technology.
“Today’s tools seem almost built for Russian disinformation techniques,” Warner opines. And the ones to come, he assures us, will be even worse.
Here’s how Warner is suggesting we deal:
Mandatory location verification. The paper suggests forcing social media platforms to authenticate and disclose the geographic origin of all user accounts or posts.
Mandatory identity verification: The paper suggests forcing social media and tech platforms to authenticate user identities and only allow “authentic” accounts (“inauthentic accounts not only pose threats to our democratic process…but undermine the integrity of digital markets”), with “failure to appropriately address inauthentic account activity” punishable as “a violation of both SEC disclosure rules and/or Section 5 of the [Federal Trade Commission] Act.”
Bot labeling: Warner’s paper suggests forcing companies to somehow label bots or be penalized (no word from Warner on how this is remotely feasible)
Define popular tech as “essential facilities.” These would be subject to all sorts of heightened rules and controls, says the paper, offering Google Maps as an example of the kinds of apps or platforms that might count. “The law would not mandate that a dominant provider offer the serve for free,” writes Warner. “Rather, it would be required to offer it on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms” provided by the government.
Other proposals include more disclosure requirements for online political speech, more spending to counter supposed cybersecurity threats, more funding for the Federal Trade Commission, a requirement that companies’ algorithms can be audited by the feds (and this data shared with universities and others), and a requirement of “interoperability between dominant platforms.”
The paper also suggests making it a rule that tech platforms above a certain size must turn over internal data and processes to “independent public interest researchers” so they can identify potential “public health/addiction effects, anticompetitive behavior, radicalization,” scams, “user propagated misinformation,” and harassment—data that could be used to “inform actions by regulators or Congress.”
And—of course— these include further revisions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, recently amendedby Congress to exclude protections for prostitution-related content. A revision to Section 230 could provide the ability for users to demand takedowns of certain sorts of content and hold platforms liable if they don’t abide, it says, while admitting that “attempting to distinguish between true disinformation and legitimate satire could prove difficult.”
“The proposals in the paper are wide ranging and in some cases even politically impossible, and raise almost as many questions as they try to answer,” suggested Mathew Ingram, putting it very mildly at the Columbia Journalism Review.
No Body Said Anything When They Too The Doctor Of Common Sense Of YouTube.
Big tech’s coordinated purge of InfoWars — which was hit by bans from Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube in rapid succession — did not occur in a vacuum. On this issue, Silicon Valley bowed to CNN journalists and Democrat politicians who ceaselessly lobbied for the site to be censored.
It’s a sign of how the concentration of power in America has shifted from big government to big tech that politicians are now lobbying tech companies rather than the other way round, but that’s exactly what happened over the course of the past few months, as Democrats applied relentless pressure on Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants to censor InfoWars.
Chief among them was Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL), who demanded that a Facebook representative “explain” their decision not to ban InfoWars at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on social media censorship last month. Calling Jones as “well-known conspiracy theorist” whose “brand is bullying,” Deutch also demanded Google’s representative explain how many strikes it would take for a channel on Google-owned YouTube to be deleted.
He then asked Google’s representative if they thought conspiracy theories were a “problem,” and asked her to explain the company’s planned solutions. It seems that YouTube has now come up with a solution: ban the channels that Rep. Deutch objects to.
At a previous hearing on social media censorship, Deutch, who represents Parkland, Florida, attacked tech companies for allowing “vile and outrageous and offensive garbage” on their platforms.
Multiple other congressional Democrats, including Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Jim Hines, and Ted Lieu have attacked the very idea of big tech censorship, calling Republican concerns a “conspiracy theory” and defending the right of tech giants to censor whomever they want.
Far-left media also played a role in demanding tech giants appoint themselves as the arbiters of free speech. Here’s the Guardian attacking Facebook for continuing to host InfoWars, and here’s BuzzFeed’s Joe Bernstein wondering why Twitter hasn’t followed Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and Apple in today’s purge. Bernstein was retweeted by CNN’s Oliver Darcy by the way.

Joe Bernstein
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@Bernstein
All of these removals put @Twitter and @Jack in the very uncomfortable position of being the only major social network to disseminate @infowars. Imagine explaining that to your employees!
12:16 PM – Aug 6, 2018
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“Facebook Wants To Cut Down On Misinformation. So Why Isn’t It Doing Anything About InfoWars” was the not-so-subtle headline at the Washington Post last month.
Perhaps the most strident was CNN, which repeatedly lobbied YouTube to demonetize InfoWars and ban Alex Jones. They also went after Facebook on the same issue, stating the social media “struggles to explain why InfoWars isn’t banned.” News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch has also attacked big tech for allowing “scurrilous news sources” to gain traction on the web.
What does this mean? It means that Democrats are pressuring social media companies to give them free political favors by granting them a free platform while denying one to their critics.
It also means that the corporate media are all working overtime to remove their competitors on social media.
And it’s working.
Alex Jones Gets to Declare a ‘Real Info War’ Against Big Tech ‘in It Together

Leftist website Slate recently published an article titled “Alex Jones Gets to Declare a Real Info War Now” in which the publication described the actual censorship that Jones suffered while claiming that he has not really been prevented from airing his ideas.
Slate published an article recently discussing the recent purge of Alex Jones and InfoWars pages across social media. Facebook, Youtube, and Apple all removed InfoWars content from their platforms in the space of a single day, which seems to imply that tech companies may be colluding with each other when they decide who should be de-platformed.
The Slate article states:
War or not, Alex Jones fans still have plenty of options to get their fix of right-fringe conspiracy-laden news: Beyond Infowars’ website, there’s the organization’s mobile app, which is still currently available for download in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. Slate first reported Monday morning that the Infowars app was still up in the Apple App Store despite the Apple podcast removal. At that time, the app ranked No. 56 in the App Store among news apps. By Monday evening, following the removals from Facebook and YouTube, Jones’ app had climbed to No. 7.
Though Apple might merit credit for giving the other platforms some cover to take more serious action against Jones, who has been using the sites to disseminate frequently harmful false stories for years, the fact that Infowars continues to have an app on Apple’s App Store is glaring. For what it’s worth, Infowars still has a presenceon LinkedIn and Instagram, too. But Monday’s bannings—and Jones’ response to them—raise a new question: Will the platforms’ actions diminish the reach of Jones’ conspiracy theories? (The more infamous of them include the false assertions that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax and that the survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting are crisis actors.) Or will Jones be able to use the bans to paint himself as a free-speech martyr, further cementing his audience’s devotion?
According to Slate, because Infowars can still use its LinkedIn account, they haven’t reallybeen censored. While Infowars may retain access to its LinkedIn and Instagram profiles, the majority of its social media following was based around Facebook and YouTube. While it may still have access to those that follow on LinkedIn, its YouTube subscribers and Facebook follower figures far outweigh the LinkedIn following.
Slate then bemoans the fact that these platforms didn’t ban InfoWars earlier, calling Jones a “bigoted fabulist.”
One of the great ironies in this mess is that YouTube, Facebook, and Apple are all deciding to enforce community moderation policies against hate speech that they’ve long had on their books. Any one of them could have taken this action years ago. But they didn’t, perhaps fearing that they’d be labeled as censorious liberals executing a political agenda, as if there’s anything particularly partisan about preventing a popular and bigoted fabulist from using your services to spread lies that are leading to real-world harm. They helped Jones exit the fringe and penetrate the mainstream. Now their fear could be realized—they’re being labeled as left-wing tech companies acting out a political agenda by right-wing media critics.
And almost proving the collusion that many have feared, Slate states that big tech companies are “in it together,”
At least the tech companies are in it together. And, of course, Jones’ fans aren’t at a total loss: Their favorite broadcaster spent the day posting videos on Twitter, collecting likes and retweets by the thousands.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/07/slate-alex-jones-gets-to-declare-a-real-info-war-against-big-tech-in-it-together/
6 Questions that Tech Giants Refuse to Answer About the InfoWars Ban

InfoWars
7 Aug 20186,349
Even though the internet is aflame with controversy over the coordinated purge of Alex Jones and InfoWars from Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple, there is no real transparency over their decision and the process by which it was made.
Alex Jones and InfoWars have been top Twitter trends for hours, and even some left-wing journalists like Michael Tracey are decrying Silicon Valley’s Masters of the Universe appointing themselves the arbiters of free speech on the web.
But Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube have offered, at most, only copy and paste explanations for why they banned InfoWars content from their platforms — or why, after months of pressure from the Democrats and CNN, they all came to the same decision on the same day. Questions about transparency have a much broader scope that just the case of InfoWars and Alex Jones. Beyond the banning of other individuals such as Tommy Robinson, the same questions apply to a whole host of actions by the Masters of the Universe, including partnering with foreign governments to shut down accounts, shadowbanning users to limit the scope of their engagement, and mass user purges.
Breitbart News sent the following questions to Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple earlier today, and have yet to receive a real answer for most of them. Apple and YouTube chose to provide the same canned statement they provided to all other media outlets who contacted them, while Facebook and Spotify ignored our request entirely.
THE QUESTIONS SILICON VALLEY WON’T ANSWER
1) What content specifically from InfoWars/Alex Jones was found to be”hate speech” and otherwise rule breaking?
InfoWars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson confirmed to Breitbart News that none of the tech giants that targeted InfoWars and Alex Jones over the past 24 hours pointed to specific content that violated their terms of service.
2) When was the decision to ban them made? What changed over the course of a few days from when you defended not banning Infowars content?
Just a few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg defended InfoWars in an interview, saying: ” “The approach that we’ve taken to false news is not to say, you can’t say something wrong on the Internet… Everyone gets things wrong, and if we were taking down people’s accounts when they got a few things wrong, then that would be a hard world for giving people a voice and saying that you care about that.”
So what changed, why suddenly, and why concurrently with most other major platforms?
3) Who made the decision to take down Infowars?
It’s unlikely that the decision to ban InfoWars was taken by a rank-and-file content reviewer.
4) Will you provide clear guidelines on “hate speech” including defining hate speech in a manner that is clear to all users?
When pressed by a member of Congress earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he couldn’t define “hate speech.” Yet that is the reason that Facebook and other platforms gave for banning InfoWars and Alex Jones today. Do they now have a definition? If so, what is it?
5) How does big tech plan to manage the incoming wave of demands to censor and remove content from other conservative sites?
Like this one, for example:

Hilary Rosen
✔
@hilaryr
These companies (Facebook, Apple, YouTube, etc) will remove Alex Jones #InfoWars (and I agree) from their content offerings but not a know sexual predator? #MuteRKelly. RT if you are confused about how seriously they take sexual assault #TimesupWOC
11:55 AM – Aug 6, 2018
72
101 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
6) Did Facebook/YouTube/Apple/Spotify communicate or coordinate with Google/YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other tech platform that recently banned InfoWars content prior to the takedown of Alex Jones and InfoWars’ content? Did any representative or employee of those companies reach out to Facebook/YouTube/Apple/Spotify before they undertook similar bans?
There was no apparent catalyzing event immediately prior to the censorship.
Here are the responses Breitbart News received from two of the companies contacted in their entirety.
YouTube:
All users agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube. When users violate these policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts.
Apple:
Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users. Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions
The other companies contacted by Breitbart News did not respond.
On a day that has left evening left-wingers like the HuffPost asking “why now?” the one thing that is clear is that the tech Masters of the Universe have some explaining to do.
Indict Comey and Investigate Daniel Richman for the damn leaks.
The Daily Caller News Foundation is suing the Department of Justice for failing to produce records regarding the Columbia University professor who received four memos from former FBI Director James Comey, one of which was leaked to The New York Times.
Cause of Action Institute, a conservative nonprofit watchdog, filed the lawsuit on behalf of TheDCNF Monday after the Justice Department and the FBI failed to produce any records related to Daniel Richman in response to the news organization’s April 25 Freedom of Information Act request.
Meanwhile, Comey, in a July 5, 2016 press conference, absolved then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of any criminal activity in using her private server for government business while she served as secretary of state, saying that she was “extremely careless,” but not grossly negligent in using a private server for official government business. Gross negligence would constitute a federal offense tied to the mishandling of classified government secrets.
Comey hired Richman as a special government employee, or SGE, to conduct an assortment of personal duties for him, including the task of developing “talking points” about the bureau’s investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Richman served on “special projects” as an SGE for at least 19 months and “served at the pleasure of” Comey, FBI records show, according to Fox News.
Richman also gave multiple interviews to reporters between July 2015 and February 2017 defending Comey’s handling of the Clinton email case.
TheDCNF seeks all of Mr. Richman’s work product developed on behalf of the former FBI director. It also seeks “all communications between the bureau and Mr. Richman concerning his SGE work assignments, all intra-bureau communications about Mr. Richman and his assignments and activities, as well as all work product delivered to Director Comey or to others within the bureau.”
The suit was filed under FOIA before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The Justice Department released some information about Richman to Congress after both House and Senate members waged a bitter campaign to obtain them, along with Comey’s private memos. Some of the documents were released beginning last April.
But the FBI and the Justice Department have hidden the full range of Richman’s activities on behalf of Comey and his interactions with the former director and other bureau officials.
