Hans Von Spakovsky

CNN Legal Experts Call Foul | PLUS: Third World Nation Status

Published by Papa Giorgio

Alan Dershowitz FLASHBACK.

JD Vance Calmly Explains ‘Sham’ Prosecution Of Donald Trump As Wolf Blitzer Stammers

Alvin Bragg’s former colleague/current CNN legal analyst called out the rigged Trump case

A former colleague of both Alvin Bragg and Todd Blanche at the Southern District of New York AND a senior legal analyst at CNN just trashed the charges brought against Trump by Bragg and the trial itself as an “ill-conceived, unjustified mess.”

Elie Honig doesn’t fault the jury for doing their job, but rips everything else about the trial in new article in the New York Magazine.

Here’s what he has to say:

[….]

…The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge.

Standing alone, falsification charges would have been mere misdemeanors under New York law, which posed two problems for the DA. First, nobody cares about a misdemeanor, and it would be laughable to bring the first-ever charge against a former president for a trifling offense that falls within the same technical criminal classification as shoplifting a Snapple and a bag of Cheetos from a bodega. Second, the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor — two years — likely has long expired on Trump’s conduct, which dates to 2016 and 2017….

(RIGHT SCOOP)

CNN Legal Panel Says There’s ‘Great Likelihood’ Of Trump Overturning Verdict On Numerous ‘Issues’

Attorneys On CNN Rip Merchan For Throwing Constitution ‘Out A Window’ With ‘Bad’ Jury Instructions

Hans von Spakovsky: New York might as well rename itself Venezuela following Trump trial verdict

….‘One of the Craziest Things’

Constitutional law expert Hans von Spakovsky says the conviction isn’t likely to stick, for an array of reasons. Chief among them: Merchan’s convoluted jury instructions, in which the Biden campaign-donor judge framed the jury’s deliberations in a way that, according to legal expert Jonathan Turley, “seemed less like a jury deliberation than a canned hunt.” Merchan told the jurors they didn’t have to agree on the three possible “unlawful means” prosecutors vaguely alleged Trump had employed to “influence” the 2016 election. 

“The jurors were told that they could split on what occurred, with four jurors accepting each of the three possible crimes in a 4-4-4 split. The court would still consider that a unanimous verdict so long as they agree that it was in furtherance of some crime,” Turley wrote in the Hill before the verdict was handed down. 

Accomplice media outlets running interference for Biden and his minions — and attempting to influence the 2024 election — collectively wailed that conservative news outlets have been misrepresenting Merchan’s jury instructions. But there’s no denying the unusual nature of the judge’s explanations at the end of a deeply legally flawed trial. 

Von Spakovsky said Merchan’s instructions point to reversible error — “an error in trial proceedings that affects a party’s rights so significantly that it is grounds for reversal if the affected party properly objected at trial,” according to the Legal Information Institute. 

“This is such a mistake. … If I were the court of appeals, the moment this case came in, I would overturn the conviction,” the former Federal Election Commission member and Heritage Foundation fellow told me before the verdict this week on the Simon Conway Show. “That is one of the craziest things I have ever heard and it is a complete violation of President Trump’s substantive due process rights.” 

Von Spakovsky said the standard in like cases is that jurors come to a unanimous agreement on each of the charges they are deliberating. He said Merchan added an absurd twist to the proceedings after handicapping Trump’s defense throughout the trial. 

Threw the Constitution ‘Out the Window’

Defense attorney Randy Zelin told CNN that Merchan’s jury instructions contained a “key flaw.” 

“Whether you are driving in a Ford or a Ferrari, if someone gives you bad directions, you’re going to end up lost. And those jury instructions were just a complete, just take the Constitution, throw it out a window, burn it, shoot it and hang it,” the attorney said on “CNN Special Report.”

Turley told Fox News that the “trial is a target rich environment for appeal,” although he said the appeal will likely “stretch beyond the election.”

Speaker Mike Johnson has called on the U.S. Supreme Court to quickly take up the case because of its unprecedented constitutional implications. The state appeals courts in line to preside over the Trump case are lined with Democrat-appointed judges. 

Von Spakovsky said the courts should act as expeditiously as the Supreme Court did in the Colorado ballot access case in which it unanimously overturned the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling kicking Trump off the state presidential primary ballot. 

As for Merchan, von Spakovsky said the judge is either one of the most incompetent judges he has ever seen or his curious instructions to the jury was “a sign of intentional misfeasance.” 

“In fact, I think it’s the latter because throughout this entire case he has acted as if he is an alternate member of the prosecution team,” the legal expert said. ….

(THE FEDERALIST)

Election Integrity: von Spakovsky | Kris Kobach (Larry O’Connor Show)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is a partial interview of Mr. von Spakovsky via the Larry O’Connor Show. I include video of the Pam Bondi presser with just a few minutes later the result of Philadelphia Democrats stopping the lawful act of viewing how ballots are processed (mark 1:05 to 4:15). Crazy! All these votes that were counted need to be recounted. And ballots that were “cured” without Republicans being close enough to observe need to be rejected. CBS PHILLY reports on the court case won:

  • PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The Trump campaign has secured a win in a Philadelphia lower court Thursday morning. Poll watchers are now allowed to be within six feet of ballot counting at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, rather than the previous 20-foot perimeter.

Larry O’Connor interviewed Kris Kobach who has been involved in the political field since the G.W. Bush admin. The topic is of course the current election. Kris’ article on BREITBART are here: “Why It’s Necessary to Watch Them Count the Votes in Pennsylvania”

Does Voter Fraud Make a Difference? Yes, Yes It Does

Published by Papa Giorgio

In this short example, John Fund confirms that voter fraud would not make a difference nationally in the popular vote that Trump erroneously Tweeted would put him ahead of Hillary — HOWEVER — it does affect smaller races. AND THIS can have very damning consequences on public policy that effects the entire populace.

Illegally.

Here is an article by Byron York:

When 1,099 Felons Vote In Race Won By 312 Ballots

…In the ’08 campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was running for re-election against Democrat Al Franken. It was impossibly close; on the morning after the election, after 2.9 million people had voted, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes.

Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman’s lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.

During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons — all ineligible to vote — who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.

Minnesota Majority took the information to prosecutors across the state, many of whom showed no interest in pursuing it. But Minnesota law requires authorities to investigate such leads. And so far, Fund and von Spakovsky report, 177 people have been convicted — not just accused, but convicted — of voting fraudulently in the Senate race. Another 66 are awaiting trial. “The numbers aren’t greater,” the authors say, “because the standard for convicting someone of voter fraud in Minnesota is that they must have been both ineligible, and ‘knowingly’ voted unlawfully.” The accused can get off by claiming not to have known they did anything wrong.

Still, that’s a total of 243 people either convicted of voter fraud or awaiting trial in an election that was decided by 312 votes. With 1,099 examples identified by Minnesota Majority, and with evidence suggesting that felons, when they do vote, strongly favor Democrats, it doesn’t require a leap to suggest there might one day be proof that Al Franken was elected on the strength of voter fraud.

And that’s just the question of voting by felons. Minnesota Majority also found all sorts of other irregularities that cast further doubt on the Senate results.

The election was particularly important because Franken’s victory gave Senate Democrats a 60th vote in favor of President Obama’s national health care proposal — the deciding vote to overcome a Republican filibuster. If Coleman had kept his seat, there would have been no 60th vote, and no Obamacare…..

Someone on LIVELEAK had a great insight! LEFTISTS like to repeat lines, one being from DailyKos, who’e headline reads:

  • MORE THAN A BILLION VOTES: 31 CASES OF VOTER FRAUD…

Here is the comment from LiveLeak:

“Wait, 1200 illegal votes in just that one election. What the [effe] happened to “There have only been 31 actual cases of voter fraud in the last decade!” Time for a full recount of all districts across the U.S. Not because it will change anything but because it is easier to tell someone to shut the [effe] up when you have numbers behind your argument.” — Fedup Withitall

Here is the entire interview with John Fund where the above came from AS WELL AS a portion of the WALL STREET JOURNAL article that prompted the interview (video is from the WSJ):

…How common is this? If only we knew. Political correctness has squelched probes of noncitizen voting, so most cases are discovered accidentally instead of through a systematic review of election records.

The bottom line is that the honor system doesn’t work.

The danger looms large in states such as California, which provides driver’s licenses to noncitizens, including those here illegally, and which also does nothing to verify citizenship during voter registration. In a 1996 House race, then-challenger Loretta Sanchez defeated incumbent Rep. Bob Dornan by under 1,000 votes. An investigation by a House committee found 624 invalid votes by noncitizens, nearly enough to overturn the result.

How big is this problem nationally? One district-court administrator estimated in 2005that up to 3% of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter-registration rolls over a two-year period were not U.S. citizens. A September report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 1,000 noncitizens who had been removed from the voter rolls in eight Virginia counties. Many of them had cast ballots in previous elections, but none was referred for possible prosecution.

The lack of prosecutions is no surprise. In 2011, the Electoral Board in Fairfax County, Va., sent the Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Eric Holder, information about 278 noncitizens registered to vote in Fairfax County, about half of whom had cast ballots in previous elections. There is no record that the Justice Department did anything.

A 2014 study by three professors at Old Dominion University and George Mason University used extensive survey data to estimate that 6.4% of the nation’s noncitizens voted in 2008 and that 2.2% voted in 2010. This study has been criticized by many academics who claim that voter fraud is vanishingly rare. Yet the Heritage Foundation maintains a list of more than 700 recent convictions for voter fraud.

A postelection survey conducted by Americas Majority Foundation found that 2.1% of noncitizens voted in the Nov. 8 election. In the battleground states of Michigan and Ohio, 2.5% and 2.1%, respectively, of noncitizens reported voting. In 2013, pollster McLaughlin & Associates conducted an extensive survey of Hispanics on immigration issues. Its voter-profile tabulation shows that 13% of noncitizens said they were registered to vote. That matches closely the Old Dominion/George Mason study, in which 15.6% of noncitizens said they were registered.

Fixing this problem is very straightforward. The Trump administration should direct the Department of Homeland Security to cooperate with states that want to verify the citizenship of registered voters. Since this will only flag illegal immigrants who have been detained at some point and legal noncitizens, states should pass laws, similar to the one in Kansas, that require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The Justice Department, instead of ignoring the issue, should again start prosecuting these cases.

The bottom line is that the honor system doesn’t work. There are people—like those caught voting illegally—who are willing to exploit these weaknesses that damage election integrity.