monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

"Turn off the lights on your way out the door"

not exactly the "smooth transition of power" that the Founding Fathers imagined.

FACT-CHECKING CLAIMS ABOUT FULTON COUNTY'S ELECTION | THESE 'SUITCASES' ARE ACTUALLY BALLOT CONTAINERS

Supporters of the president are calling it #SuitcaseGate on social media. However, they are not suitcases. 11Alive confirmed they're the standard ballot containers.

Author: Brendan Keefe
Published: 8:03 PM EST December 4, 2020

ATLANTA —
President Donald Trump's team is pointing to newly released surveillance video from State Farm Arena as evidence of election fraud. 11Alive is taking a look at the video and the claims to separate fact from fiction.

The video was shown Thursday in the State Senate Hearing, but state investigators confirm they've had it for weeks and determined Fulton County was legally county ballots. There is more to the story, however.

"Yeah, I saw four suitcases come out from underneath the table," said Jackie Pick, a Trump Attorney.

"I'm going to call it a suitcase," Pick said.

Supporters of the president are calling it #SuitcaseGate on social media.

However, they are not suitcases. 11Alive confirmed they're the standard ballot containers used by Fulton County.

"What the video shows is that they have pulled out plastic bins from underneath the desks. Those are bins that they keep under their desks near the scanners," said Richard Barron, Fulton County's elections director.

A Democratic senator mentioned during the hearing that this has been investigated already. Here is part of that exchange with Pick.

Senator: They've investigated repeatedly, that they had a monitor on-site the entire time, that this whole thing has been debunked for weeks by our Secretary of State's Office.

Pick: I doubt he's seen the video.

Senator: What evidence?

Pick: Your officials need to watch the video.

11Alive learned that they did watch the video, which is not new. State investigators reviewed the State Farm surveillance tapes weeks ago.

Gabriel Sterling with the Secretary of State's Office tweeted "the 90 second video of election workers purporting to show fraud was watched in its entirety (hours) by @GaSecofState investigators. Shows normal ballot processing."

"The press reported that there was like a supposed water main break, or pipe break or whatever, and this was an excuse for people clearing out of State Farm," Pick said at the hearing.

The water pipe leak and the events on the surveillance video did not happen on the same night. Those two events occurred 17 hours apart.

The workers leaving were those who opened the ballot envelopes. Once they were done processing that batch they went home.

"At about 10, there was one person working the polls who told everyone in the room to leave," Pick said.

The Fulton elections director explained what happened.

"They began letting certain people go. No announcement was ever made to leave, for anyone to leave," Barron said.

Republican monitors claim they were forced out.

However, both 11Alive journalists on site that night independently confirmed that they were not told to leave, but they were told counting was done for the night.

"Why are they only counting them whenever the place is cleared out with no witnesses," Pick asked.

11Alive was able to determine that this part is true. The media and the party monitors were not given notice that counting would continue into the early morning hours and they should have been.

The Secretary of State's Office said one of its monitors was present. The counting of those heavily-Democratic absentee ballots did result in a big batch of numbers coming from Fulton County in the 1 a.m. am hour on election night.

The spike in the numbers has led Trump supporters to conclude that Joe Biden took the lead because of it - however, that's not true.

Biden was already leading Fulton County before those absentee ballots were counted and he did not take the lead in Georgia until days later.

When are you going to turn yours on

especially when Mr and Mrd Tubby an staff werent wearing masks.

CASPER, Wyo. — A Wyoming Department of Health official involved in the state's response to the coronavirus questioned the legitimacy of the pandemic and described a forthcoming vaccine as a biological weapon at a recent event.

The “so-called pandemic” and efforts to develop a vaccine are plots by Russia and China to spread communism worldwide, department readiness and countermeasures manager Igor Shepherd said at the Nov. 10 event held by the group Keep Colorado Free and Open.

(...)

Attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who had filed lawsuits in the state of Georgia alleging fraud in the 2020 presidential election, had an appeal to analyze Dominion voting machines in the state denied by a federal judge on Friday.

President Donald Trump has claimed without evidence, among other things, that voting machines from the Dominion Voting Systems company were programmed to flip votes that were cast for him over to President-elect Joe Biden. Dominion has denied Trump's allegations. Powell and Wood have publicly stated their agreement with Trump's allegations and have filed lawsuits in attempts to prove the claims.

On Wednesday, Powell submitted a filing that asked the court to allow some Dominion voting machines to be examined by Republican electors. Members of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals were not sure if they had the authority to examine the appeal. On Friday, Powell entered a briefing alleging mitigating circumstances would allow the court to rule on the appeal. Judge Andrew Brasher of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Georgia denied the appeal later that day. Brasher was nominated to the court by Trump in 2019 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in February.

"This appeal arises from last-minute litigation that alleges widespread election related misconduct and seeks sweeping relief," Brasher wrote. However, Brasher ruled that his court did not have the jurisdiction to hear the appeal.

"Because we lack jurisdiction, the appeal is DISMISSED and the motion for permissive appeal is DENIED," the ruling concluded. "Because we must dismiss this appeal, the defendants' conditional cross appeal is also DISMISSED. Any other pending motions are DENIED AS MOOT."

Brasher's decision was the latest blow to the Trump campaign's attempts to overturn election results in Georgia. On Friday, after three recounts of the ballots, Georgia projected that President-elect Joe Biden had won the state's election. According to the Associated Press, Biden garnered 49.5 percent of Georgia's popular vote while Trump obtained 49.3 percent of the vote.

Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

Quote:

department readiness and countermeasures manager Igor Shepherd

So now it is clear that it was simply part of a normal counting process. But the part was not perfect due to some misunderstandings.

(1) There was a monitor on the scene, but who was from the Secretary of State's Office, not one of the Republican monitors.

(2) The Republican monitors left, either unaware of that the counting would proceed (of course the notice of the proceeding should be sent to inform them, but, shouldn't themselves be familiar with the procedure?), or misunderstanding there was an announcement to demand them to leave (no, there was no such an announcement).

(3) The video was not new, rather, it had been repeatedly investigated.

Wyoming health official says 'so-called pandemic' a communist plot

Quote:

CASPER, Wyo. — A Wyoming Department of Health official involved in the state's response to the coronavirus questioned the legitimacy of the pandemic and described a forthcoming vaccine as a biological weapon at a recent event.

The “so-called pandemic” and efforts to develop a vaccine are plots by Russia and China to spread communism worldwide, department readiness and countermeasures manager Igor Shepherd said at the Nov. 10 event held by the group Keep Colorado Free and Open.

(...)

https://www.11alive.com/amp/article/news/politics/elections/fact-checking-claims-about-fulton-countys-election/85-89c150d2-c917-44b6-b7ab-a29dd9dcb888

Quote:

FACT-CHECKING CLAIMS ABOUT FULTON COUNTY'S ELECTION | THESE 'SUITCASES' ARE ACTUALLY BALLOT CONTAINERS

Supporters of the president are calling it #SuitcaseGate on social media. However, they are not suitcases. 11Alive confirmed they're the standard ballot containers.

Author: Brendan Keefe
Published: 8:03 PM EST December 4, 2020

ATLANTA —
President Donald Trump's team is pointing to newly released surveillance video from State Farm Arena as evidence of election fraud. 11Alive is taking a look at the video and the claims to separate fact from fiction.

The video was shown Thursday in the State Senate Hearing, but state investigators confirm they've had it for weeks and determined Fulton County was legally county ballots. There is more to the story, however.

"Yeah, I saw four suitcases come out from underneath the table," said Jackie Pick, a Trump Attorney.

"I'm going to call it a suitcase," Pick said.

Supporters of the president are calling it #SuitcaseGate on social media.

However, they are not suitcases. 11Alive confirmed they're the standard ballot containers used by Fulton County.

"What the video shows is that they have pulled out plastic bins from underneath the desks. Those are bins that they keep under their desks near the scanners," said Richard Barron, Fulton County's elections director.

A Democratic senator mentioned during the hearing that this has been investigated already. Here is part of that exchange with Pick.

Senator: They've investigated repeatedly, that they had a monitor on-site the entire time, that this whole thing has been debunked for weeks by our Secretary of State's Office.

Pick: I doubt he's seen the video.

Senator: What evidence?

Pick: Your officials need to watch the video.

11Alive learned that they did watch the video, which is not new. State investigators reviewed the State Farm surveillance tapes weeks ago.

Gabriel Sterling with the Secretary of State's Office tweeted "the 90 second video of election workers purporting to show fraud was watched in its entirety (hours) by @GaSecofState investigators. Shows normal ballot processing."

"The press reported that there was like a supposed water main break, or pipe break or whatever, and this was an excuse for people clearing out of State Farm," Pick said at the hearing.

The water pipe leak and the events on the surveillance video did not happen on the same night. Those two events occurred 17 hours apart.

The workers leaving were those who opened the ballot envelopes. Once they were done processing that batch they went home.

"At about 10, there was one person working the polls who told everyone in the room to leave," Pick said.

The Fulton elections director explained what happened.

"They began letting certain people go. No announcement was ever made to leave, for anyone to leave," Barron said.

Republican monitors claim they were forced out.

However, both 11Alive journalists on site that night independently confirmed that they were not told to leave, but they were told counting was done for the night.

"Why are they only counting them whenever the place is cleared out with no witnesses," Pick asked.

11Alive was able to determine that this part is true. The media and the party monitors were not given notice that counting would continue into the early morning hours and they should have been.

The Secretary of State's Office said one of its monitors was present. The counting of those heavily-Democratic absentee ballots did result in a big batch of numbers coming from Fulton County in the 1 a.m. am hour on election night.

The spike in the numbers has led Trump supporters to conclude that Joe Biden took the lead because of it - however, that's not true.

Biden was already leading Fulton County before those absentee ballots were counted and he did not take the lead in Georgia until days later.