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Mark Meadows Was Registered To Vote In Three States At Once, Officials Say

Mark Meadows Was Registered To Vote In Three States At Once, Officials Say

Mark Meadows, former White House Chief of Staff for the Trump administration and purveyor of election fraud conspiracies, is facing increased scrutiny and fresh allegations of voter fraud after the Washington Post reported Friday that he was registered to vote in three states at the same time.

Meadows was registered to vote in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia at the same time for three weeks, election records obtained by the Post show. However, Meadows was purged from North Carolina’s voter roles last week by the State Board of Elections in an investigation by North Carolina’s attorney general and the State Bureau of Investigations into whether he had committed voter fraud.

The investigation kicked into gear after a New Yorker report that Meadows had registered to vote with the address of a mobile home he didn’t own and never lived in. The previous owner of the Scaly Mountain mobile home was shocked to learn that Meadows had listed that address because his wife had spent only two nights there, despite renting the place for a few months, the New Yorker added.

According to the Post, Meadows is still a registered voter in both South Carolina and Virginia. A representative for South Carolina Elections, Chris Whitmire, told the AP that Meadows and his wife, Debbie Meadows, registered to vote in March 2022, two weeks after the New Yorker published its report.

“[March 2022] is when [Meadows] became active,” Whitmire added in his response to the AP, implying that Meadows had yet to vote in South Carolina.

Meadows was a congressman from January 2013 until March 2020, after which he took up the post of then-President’s Trump fourth and final chief of staff. After Trump lost the 2020 presidential elections, Meadows joined a far-right institute that purported to promote “election integrity” and pushed lies of election fraud.

In an August 2020 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Meadows whined about the inaccuracy in states’ voter rolls, saying, “I don’t want my vote or anyone else’s to be disenfranchised. … Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rolls are, with people just moving around? … Anytime you move, you’ll change your driver’s license, but you don’t call up and say, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m re-registering.’”

Apparently, Meadows didn’t tell Virginia he was re-registering when he signed up to vote in the Virginia gubernatorial elections the following year, a race Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin ended up winning.

Voter role inaccuracies evidently didn’t matter to Meadows anymore when he registered to vote in South Carolina last month, despite already being a registered voter in Virginia and North Carolina at the time.

In July 2021, Meadows splashed nearly $1.6 million on a three-story waterfront home in South Carolina, per the Post. While using the abandoned motor home in North Carolina as an address for his voter records, Meadows sold for $370,000 a Sapphire home where his mother lived and from which she voted for many years.

A representative for Mark Meadows refused to comment, and requests for comment left at the retirement community where his mother now resides went unanswered.

Report: Trump Abused His Authority To Harm CNN And Help Fox News

Report: Trump Abused His Authority To Harm CNN And Help Fox News

A stunning new report in The New Yorker magazine on the incestuous ties between Fox News Channel and the Trump White House reveals that the president personally attempted to block the merger of Time-Warner and AT&T — presumably at the behest of Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch — by misusing his power over the Justice Department.

At 10,000 words-plus, reporter Jane Mayer’s article, “The Making of the Fox News White House,” is replete with fresh new details depicting Trump’s dependency on Fox hosts for policy advice — he speaks almost daily with Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs has been patched into Oval Office meetings — as well as the bizarre symbiosis between Fox staff and White House personnel. She explores the role of Bill Shine, the White House communications chief who served under the late Roger Ailes at Fox, covering up Ailes’ brutal sexual misconduct for years. She reveals that Fox News executives killed the devastating story of Michael Cohen’s payoffs to Stormy Daniels, months before the 2016 election, despite overwhelming evidence unearthed by a Fox correspondent.

And Mayer discusses Trump’s servility toward Murdoch, who wields enormous influence over the administration, even though the president knows that the media boss condescends to him.

It is his administration’s relentless efforts to advance the business interests of the Murdoch empire that could get Trump into serious trouble, as multiple investigations of the White House move forward. According to Mayer, the president ordered Gary Cohn, then a top White House economic adviser, to tell the Justice Department to file anti-trust litigation against a merger between AT&T and Fox competitor Time Warner (also the parent company of CNN, the cable network Trump constantly derides as “fake news”).

Her account begins with the backstory:

Last June, after only six months of deliberation, the Trump Administration approved Fox’s bid to sell most of its entertainment assets to Disney, for seventy-one billion dollars. The Murdoch family will receive more than two billion dollars in the deal, and will become a major stockholder in the combined company. The Justice Department expressed no serious antitrust concerns, even though the combined company will reportedly account for half the box-office revenue in America. Trump publicly congratulated Murdoch even before the Justice Department signed off on the deal, and claimed that it would create jobs. In fact, the consolidation is projected to result in thousands of layoffs…

The Justice Department, meanwhile, went to court in an effort to stop A. T. & T.’s acquisition of Time Warner, which owns CNN. Time Warner saw the deal as essential to its survival at a time when the media business is increasingly dominated by giant competitors such as Google and Facebook. Murdoch understood this impulse: in 2014, 21st Century Fox had tried, unsuccessfully, to buy Time Warner. For him, opposing his rivals’ deal was a matter of shrewd business. Trump also opposed the deal, but many people suspected that his objection was a matter of petty retaliation against CNN. Although Presidents have traditionally avoided expressing opinions about legal matters pending before the judicial branch, Trump has bluntly criticized the plan. The day after the Justice Department filed suit to stop it, he declared the proposed merger “not good for the country.” Trump also claimed that he was “not going to get involved,” and the Justice Department has repeatedly assured the public that he hasn’t done so.

However, in the late summer of 2017, a few months before the Justice Department filed suit, Trump ordered Gary Cohn, then the director of the National Economic Council, to pressure the Justice Department to intervene. According to a well-informed source, Trump called Cohn into the Oval Office along with John Kelly, who had just become the chief of staff, and said in exasperation to Kelly, “I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened! I’ve mentioned it fifty times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”

Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, evidently understood that it would be highly improper for a President to use the Justice Department to undermine two of the most powerful companies in the country as punishment for unfavorable news coverage, and as a reward for a competing news organization that boosted him. According to the source, as Cohn walked out of the meeting he told Kelly, “Don’t you fucking dare call the Justice Department. We are not going to do business that way.”

Did Trump deliver his biggest favor for Murdoch by abusing his office? As one expert quoted by Mayer says, there may be “innocent” explanations for the Justice Department’s pursuit of litigation against Time Warner. Last month, a federal court ruled against the government.

Neither Kelly nor Cohn agreed to be interviewed for Mayer’s story. But they may not so easily ignore a call from a Congressional committee or a federal grand jury.

Read the entire article here.

Feinstein Urges Delay After New Sexual Misconduct Allegation Against Kavanaugh

Feinstein Urges Delay After New Sexual Misconduct Allegation Against Kavanaugh

The New Yorkerreported on Sunday night that Senate Democrats are investigating a second accusation of sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Reported by staff writers Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, the story includes an extensive interview with Deborah Ramirez, 53, who says the incident occurred during their freshman year together at Yale University.

Ramirez agreed to be interviewed when the magazine contacted her. She said that she recalls a drunken dormitory party where Kavanaugh thrust his exposed penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Kavanaugh denied that the incident ever occurred, calling it a “smear” in a statement distributed by the White House.

According to the New Yorker, the story has spurred controversy among their Yale classmates, some of whom supported Ramirez’s  account while others backed Kavanaugh’s denial.

But as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepared to hear testimony this week from Kavanaugh’s first accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, at least one of its members asked Sunday night that any further action be postponed pending a full investigation of both charges.

“I am writing to request an immediate postponement of any further proceedings related to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh,” wrote Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, in a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the committee chair. “I also ask that the newest allegations of sexual misconduct be referred to the FBI for investigation….We need a fair, independent process that will gather all the facts, interview all the witnesses, and ensure that the Committee receives a full and impartial report.”

Kavanaugh is already under heavy scrutiny following Ford’s accusation that he assaulted her in an attempted rape during a drunken high school party when both were teenagers in suburban Maryland. He categorically denied ever attending the party described by Ford or participating in any such attack.

#MeToo: How I Learned What Predators Like Weinstein Do To Women Every Day

#MeToo: How I Learned What Predators Like Weinstein Do To Women Every Day

OK then,  #MeToo.
Long ago and far away, I had an academic superior who enjoyed sexually humiliating younger men. There was unwanted touching—always in social situations–but mainly it was about making suggestive remarks hinting that being a “hunk” was how I’d gotten hired.
My “pretty little wife,” as she was insultingly called, got to stand there and watch. We had no idea how to defend ourselves. There was a second guy in my department, also an administrator with power over one’s career, who made a practice of inviting younger men on manly hikes in the woods and making aggressive passes.
It was a thoroughly poisonous atmosphere. I knew that to complain would invite ruin: initially through what’s now called “gaslighting”—claiming I’d imagined everything—followed by accusations of sexual panic and homophobia.
A definite no-win situation.
Ironically, life in a New England college town had been among my Arkansas wife’s girlhood dreams. Instead, she found herself patronized to her face when she opened her mouth—always by academics, never ordinary New Englanders, I should stipulate.  
I quit before they could fire me.
But it was a real learning experience. In consequence, although definitely not Mr. Sensitive, when it comes to sexual abuse I’ve always understood what women are talking about.
Much of the time, it isn’t even about desire—apart from the desire to put you down and keep you there.
Yet my situation was far less threatening than that of the women preyed upon by disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein,  and so many others confronting harassment or worse. First, there was no possibility of physical force. Second, my antagonists’ power was limited to the precincts of one provincial academic department.
All I had to do was walk away.
No harm, no foul.
Not so with Weinstein. As the head honcho at one of the most successful movie companies in the world, he had the wherewithal to advance or ruin an actress’s entire career. Based upon first-person accounts in Ronan Farrow’s lengthy New Yorkerexpose, he was a calculating predator who set the same trap repeatedly in luxury hotel suites in New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris.
He’d invite a young actress to meeting in his hotel suite, greet her with drink in hand wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and then pounce, sometimes violently. A bigtime Democratic donor, Weinstein followed the script as written by Donald J. Trump. You remember how it goes: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
If certain of the New Yorker allegations could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt —alas, they probably cannot—Weinstein belongs not in some luxury European rehab but an American penitentiary. He’s more than a sexual harasser; he’s a rapist.
Also, apparently, a bully in other ways. “Lucky me,” commented the British actress Kate Winslet, “I somehow dodged that bullet. The fact that I’m never going to have to deal with Harvey Weinstein again as long as I live is one of the best things that’s ever happened and I’m sure the feeling is universal.”
Although he’s produced humane films such as Good Will Hunting, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, and Shakespeare in Love, tales of his temper tantrums are indeed universal.
That said, Weinstein didn’t invent the concept of the Hollywood casting couch nor the louche sexual ethics of the movie business generally. Trading sexual favors for sought-after parts is as old as the theater. The ancient Greek dramatists Sophocles and Euripides were famous for their adventurous love lives. Indeed, one of the most interesting articles to emerge from the Weinstein affair appeared in Slate, recounting a British fan magazine’s 1956 expose titled “The Perils of Show Business.”
Incongruously illustrated with cheesecake photos, it featured the following rules from actress Marigold Russell that working women everywhere would be well-advised to heed: “One: when you have to talk business, stick to offices—and office hours. Two: refer invitations and offers to your agent. Three: don’t give your home phone number, give your agent’s.”
Actress and director Sarah Polley writes that her agent wouldn’t let her meet Weinstein alone when she was 19, which told her all she needed to know. She also figured that “the idea of making people care about [Hollywood sexual predation] seemed as distant an ambition as pulling the sun out of the sky.”
Me, I’m so vain that I can’t imagine wanting intimacy with somebody that didn’t want me back. Which in the final analysis makes a bully like Weinstein seem almost pathetic to me, although not to his victims, I’m sure.
Awful as he is, there’s also something smug and ugly about these ritual media stonings. For a columnist like the New York Times’ Bret Stephens to write that Weinstein’s “repulsive face turns out to be the spitting image of his putrescent soul” strikes me as seriously over the line.
 We sinless pundits hide carefully behind our bylines.