90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, June 18, 2021

Georgia investigator's notes reveal 'massive' election integrity problems in Atlanta

Twenty-nine page memo obtained by Just the News cites double counting, insecure storage, "massive chain of custody problem" and a worker's threat to "f*ck sh*t up."

In a nationally televised interview in January, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger rattled off an impressive list of measures his state used to ensure the November election count was accurate. "We had safe, secure, honest elections," he declared to "60 Minutes."

That rosy assessment, however, masked an ugly truth inside his agency's own files: A contractor handpicked to monitor election counting in Fulton County wrote a 29-page memo back in November outlining the "massive" election integrity failures and mismanagement that he witnessed in the Atlanta-area's election centers.

The bombshell report, constructed like a minute-by-minute diary, cited a litany of high-risk problems such as the double-counting of votes, insecure storage of ballots, possible violations of voter privacy, the mysterious removal of election materials at a vote collection warehouse, and the suspicious movement of "too many" ballots on Election Day.

"This seems like a massive chain of custody problem," the contractor Carter Jones warned in the memo delivered by his firm Seven Hill Strategies to Raffensperger's office shortly after the election.

That glaring notation was written around 4:00 p.m. on Election Day, when Jones observed absentee ballots arriving at the county's central absentee scanning center at Atlanta's State Farm Arena "in rolling bins 2k at a time."

"It is my understanding is that the ballots are supposed to be moved in numbered, sealed boxes to protect them," he wrote, noting these ballots weren't.

He also feared the flow of absentee ballots seemed too voluminous. "Too many ballots coming in for secure black ballot boxes," he observed.

You can read the full report obtained by Just the News from the Secretary of State's office here:

File Unabridged Notes.pdf

Jones also raised concerns about the temporary workers brought in by a firm called Happy Faces to scan and...

Hunter’s Dip into the Art World Connected to ‘Weed Slut’ Lingerie Entrepreneur Zoe Kestan

Hunter Biden’s connections to the New York art scene reportedly go through lingerie entrepreneur Zoe Kestan, otherwise known as @weed_slut_420 on Instagram.

President Joe Biden’s 51-year-old scandal-plagued son is venturing into the art world, with Soho art dealer Georges Bergès, who reportedly has some ties to China, holding a private viewing for Hunter’s artwork in Los Angeles, followed by an art exhibition in New York in the fall. Hunter has reportedly been working on his art full time, and his pieces, Bergès told Artnet, will “range from $75,000 for works on paper to $500,000 for large-scale paintings.”

Hunter’s gateway into the art world appears to be connected to Zoe Kestan, “the lingerie entrepreneur who is better known by her Instagram handle @weed_slut_420,” as Artnet reported last year:

For a period in 2018, Biden could be seen stopping by art openings and parties on the Lower East Side, and attended a runway show for the hip downtown fashion brand Lou Dallas. Sources said that many of his art-world connections came through his relationship with Zoe Kestan, the lingerie entrepreneur who is better known by her Instagram handle @weed_slut_420. In addition to modeling her wares on her account, where she has nearly 75,000 followers, Kestan is also an artist whose Polaroid snapshots have appeared in group shows with Bernadette Van-Huy, Danny McDonald, and Sam Pulitzer. She has also appeared on the controversial podcast Red Scare, hosted by art critic Anna Khachiyan and actress Dasha Nekrasova, and modeled in runway shows during London Fashion Week. (Reps for Kestan and Biden didn’t get back to us.)

There’s also some concrete leftover evidence of Hunter’s brief wade into the water of downtown art studios and gallery openings. Sources say that, being circulated around the downtown gallery hub of Dimes Square like samizdat, are images of oil paintings of Hunter Biden—that is, images of paintings of all of Biden with nothing left to the imagination—made by another local artist who has asked dealers to not reveal her identity. We’ve yet to get a hold of the depictions of Hunter in the buff or a lead on that painter’s identity, but rest assured: we will keep you posted.

However, Hunter’s new venture has sparked growing concerns about the potential for pay-for-play corruption in light of the fact that the buyers will remain anonymous, and the shadowy nature of the art world is a notorious avenue for money laundering. Last year, a bipartisan report by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that “secrecy, anonymity, and a lack of regulation create an environment ripe for laundering money and evading sanctions” in the art world.

“Given the intrinsic secrecy of the art industry, it is clear that change is needed in this multi-billion dollar industry,” the report determined.

Hunter Biden’s past money-making ventures — specifically his international business dealings with Ukraine and China at a time when his then-vice president father was the point-person for U.S. foreign policy with those countries — furthers these concerns, according to Breitbart News senior contributor and Profiles in Corruption author Peter Schweizer.

“Hunter Biden was repeatedly hired and given deals by foreign entities that he was clearly not qualified for in the hopes of getting favors from his father,” Schweizer, president of Government Accountability Institute (GAI), told Breitbart News. “It is not a stretch to believe that foreign entities will pay for or commission his works of art at inflated prices to...

He warned Apple they were too dependent on China but Apple didn't listen

The NY Times describes Doug Guthrie as “one of America’s leading experts on China’s turn toward capitalism.” Guthrie got a Ph.D. from Berkeley and then taught at New York University. In 2014, Apple hired him for his expertise on China. And he spent several years trying to warn the company that China was changing and Apple was vulnerable:

China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, was leaning on Western companies to strengthen his grip on the country. Mr. Guthrie realized that few companies were bigger targets, or more vulnerable, than Apple. It assembled nearly every Apple device in China and had made the region its No. 2 sales market.

So Mr. Guthrie began touring the company with a slide show and lecture to ring the alarm. Apple, he said, had no Plan B.

“I was going around to business leaders, and I’m like: ‘Do you guys understand who Xi Jinping is? Are you listening to what’s going on here?’” Mr. Guthrie said in an interview. “That was my big calling card.”

His warnings were prescient. China has taken a nationalist, authoritarian turn under Mr. Xi, and American companies like Apple, Nike and the National Basketball Association are facing a dilemma. While doing business in China often remains lucrative, it also increasingly requires uncomfortable compromises.

That last link goes to a story the Times published last month about Apple’s decision to effectively hand over data on all of its customers in China to the CCP.

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has said the data is safe. But at the data center in Guiyang, which Apple hoped would be completed by next month, and another in the Inner Mongolia region, Apple has largely ceded control to the Chinese government.

Chinese state employees physically manage the computers. Apple abandoned the encryption technology it used elsewhere after China would not allow it. And the digital keys that unlock information on those computers are stored in the data centers they’re meant to secure…

Mr. Cook often talks about Apple’s commitment to civil liberties and privacy. But to stay on the right side of Chinese regulators, his company has put the data of its Chinese customers at risk and has aided government censorship in the Chinese version of its App Store. After Chinese employees complained, it even dropped the “Designed by Apple in California” slogan from the backs of iPhones.

Those compromises had to be made because China has a lot of leverage. Nearly all of Apple’s products are manufactured and assembled there. It’s also Apple’s 2nd biggest market after the US. Refusing to play ball with China could decimate the company. And according to Doug Guthrie the company still has no plan B. It is almost entirely dependent on China.

As is often the case these days, people commenting on these stories display a lot of common sense that people like Tim Cook appear to lack:

All American companies need to pull out of China; it would be the best thing for America and the rest of the “democratic” world. Our money continues to support the Chinese government and their suppression of Tibet, Taiwan, and many of their peoples.

I’ve never understood why investment (and travel, etc) allowed in China and other communist countries while we continue our complete boycott of communist Cuba. What is the difference? China is a lot more “dangerous” to us than Cuba.

Maybe a complete withdrawal isn’t possible but it’s not hard to understand the impetus. We’re funding China’s rise and it’s crackdown on human rights, complete with a system of prisons in Xinjiang. If we’re not thinking hard about how to get out of this position, we really ought to be. Another one:

The following should appear in every article on this and related subjects: The United States considers China to be engaged in genocide against their Uyghur population, which includes forced labor for foreign companies (which can be difficult for foreign firms to track). How we can be doing such volumes of business with China while they are violating any and all human right against the Uyghurs is beyond me — we will hold our heads in shame, one day, as we should be doing now.

How long before China just changes the names on the factories and cuts the legs out from under...