Tag: dana nessel
Dana Nessel

Heavily Armed Michigan Man Arrested After Death Threats To Jewish Officials

Antisemitic violence has been on the rise in the U.S. since 2021. The latest incident comes out of Michigan, where a man allegedly tweeted a threat to kill Jewish members of the state government. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel claims to be one of his targets.

According to reporting by CNN, on February 17, the FBI National Threat Operations Center notified the Detroit FBI office about a Twitter user with the handle @tempered_reason, who tweeted that he was “heading back to Michigan now threatening to carry out the punishment of death to anyone that is Jewish in the Michigan govt if they don’t leave, or confess.” The user added that any attempts to “subdue” him would “be met with deadly force in self-defense.”

The man, identified as Jack Eugene Carpenter III, has an arrest record and a protection order against him. He had three 9mm handguns registered to his name, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, CNN reports. One of the guns was “stolen” from a past partner.

Nessel tweeted Thursday morning that she was one of Carpenter’s targets.

“The FBI has confirmed I was a target of the heavily armed defendant in this matter. It is my sincere hope that the federal authorities take this offense just as seriously as my Hate Crimes & Domestic Terrorism Unit takes plots to murder elected officials.”

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Carpenter was a former employee of the University of Michigan. He claimed on Twitter that he “was fired for refusing to take experimental medication.” It is assumed he’s referring to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Carpenter’s Twitter feed was rife with conspiratorial rants.

He claimed that if he were arrested, he would “get the lawyer removed due to conflict of interest because they are Jewish.” He mentions by name Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Anthony Fauci, Chris Cuomo, and multiple University of Michigan personnel. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the only Jewish figure he mentions is Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Carpenter additionally claimed President Joe Biden was not democratically elected and that he would give “a brief reprieve to any Zionist Christian or Zionist Jew” who wanted “to return to the country to which you actually owe allegiance.”

Michigan has become a home base for violent and extremist groups of late, including the group put on trial for attempting to kidnap Gov. Whitmer, a Democrat. The head of that group was sentenced to 19 years in prison.

Florida is currently a bastion of antisemitism.

Just last week, a group of neo-Nazis from the Goyim Defense League (GDL) gathered outside of the Chabad of South Orlando and, for hours, harassed members of the Chabad as they drove onto the property, WESH in Orlando reports.

"Leave our country, go back to Israel. You know, where you bomb Palestinian kids?" a GDL protester can be heard screaming in a video widely posted to social media. The Jerusalem Post reports that the person screaming was GDL founder Jon Minadeo.

"It was very disturbing. People were traumatized by it," Rabbi Yosef Konikov said. "They were speaking to every individual that was entering and exiting the property. And saying things that you would expect. You know how Nazis in World War II spoke when they were talking to Jews in that era. That spoke with hatred and venom in their eyes."

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Michigan Attorney General Refers Electoral Certificate Forgers For Federal Prosecution

Michigan Attorney General Refers Electoral Certificate Forgers For Federal Prosecution

The group of Michigan Republicans who created a false electoral college certificate, claiming that Donald Trump had won the state and they were the duly appointed electors, have been referred to federal prosecutors by State Attorney General Dana Nessel.The Detroit News reports that even though Nessel indicated her intention to send the case to federal authorities, state charges remained possible.

"Under state law,” said Nessel during an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show, “I think clearly you have forgery of a public record, which is a 14-year offense, and election law forgery, which is a five-year offense.”

Over the last week, information has been released showing that Republicans in multiple states created false election certificates claiming to certify a slate of electors supporting Donald Trump. In the case of Michigan, that certificate falsely claimed that Donald Trump had won the state, falsely claimed to record the official slate of electors, and falsely claimed that those electors had been selected at the state capitol. In fact, they were selected in the Michigan Republican Party headquarters in Lansing. This collection of false claims was sent by registered mail to the archivist at the National Archives as part of an extensive scheme to justify refusing to recognize the actual results of the election.

Republicans didn’t just scheme to overthrow democracy. They put it in writing and signed their names.

Trump supporters created false electoral certificates in at least Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico, in addition to Michigan. These certificates weren’t created by random supporters on the street, or as part of some Q-Anon forum. They came from Republican Party leaders, local officials, and state legislators. As an example, the Michigan certificate included the state party’s co-chair and vice chair, along with a member of the national committee and a township election clerk. The 16 signatories of the Michigan document purport to be "duly elected and qualified electors" under the false claim that they "convened and organized" in the state Capitol. In truth, when the group tried to enter the Capitol building, they were stopped by police.

As the News sums up nicely:

Democrat Joe Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, a result that's been upheld by a series of court rulings, more than 200 audits and an investigation by the GOP-controlled state Senate Oversight Committee.

Asked why she had attempted to send a false certificate to the National Archives, Republican National Committee Member Kathy Berden replied, "I can’t comment on anything like that. That was a long time ago."

But Republicans in Michigan and elsewhere may not have the luxury of falling back on their oh-so-short memories. The series of false election certificates are a tangible representation of the coup attempt organized by the Trump White House.

Under that scheme, as presented by attorney John Eastman, Republicans would object to the counting of votes in “disputed” states on January 6. The false slates of electors could then be used as supposed evidence that there was a question about the outcome in these states. Then-Vice President Mike Pence could then either simply leave out the electoral votes from these states, declaring Trump the winner of a much-reduced electoral college, or throw the question to Republican-dominated state legislatures. A version of this plan was briefed to Republicans in Congress in a lengthy PowerPoint presentation so they would know their roles in the scheme.

As more information reaches the public, the odds that the House select committee on January 6 will refer criminal charges of conspiracy to the Department of Justice only increases. However, in the case of Michigan at least, the Department of Justice may not be waiting for the committee.

Article reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Sidney Powell

Michigan Authorities Cite Sidney Powell’s Own Arguments In Disbarment Action

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Sidney Powell's defense against a $1.3 billion lawsuit over her lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election could come back to bite her.

Powell, a lawyer who supported Donald Trump's claims of election fraud and filed multiple failed lawsuits across the country seeking to overturn the 2020 election, is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for defamation after she falsely accused the company of conspiring with a dead Venezuelan dictator to rig the election against Trump.

Back in March, Powell argued that Dominion's lawsuit should be dismissed because "no reasonable person" would believe her lies about voting machine rigging.

Now, however, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is using Powell's defense in the Dominion lawsuit to support filings on February 1 made by Nessel, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson with the Attorney Grievance Commission in Michigan and the State Bar of Texas calling for Powell's disbarment.

Nessel is seeking sanctions against Powell and three other attorneys for filing frivolous lawsuits to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the Wolverine State, asking that they be stripped of their licenses to practice law and forced to repay legal fees incurred as a result of their suits.

"Faced with the specter of more than $1.3 billion in damages in the Dominion Action, Ms. Powell has adopted a new litigation strategy to evade Dominion's defamation claim: the truth. Whether that strategy will be advantageous in the Dominion Action remains to be seen, but it strongly underscores why sanctions and attorneys' fees are appropriate here," reads the brief Nessel filed in the sanctions cases, according to the website Law & Crime.

The brief continues, "If there were any doubts about counsel's mindset when filing this action, Ms. Powell has put them to rest. She and her co-counsel knew there was no reasonable basis for the statements they made in this litigation, but they made them anyway."

In seeking to defend herself against the sanctions Michigan is seeking, Powell had said in February that she shouldn't be disbarred because her allegations of fraud could be proved, the Detroit Free Pressreported.

But that doesn't jibe with Powell's defense in the Dominion lawsuit, which claimed that "reasonable" people would not have believed her claims.

Nessel tweeted on Wednesday, "As lawyers, fidelity to the law is paramount and these attorneys seemingly made statements they knew were misleading in an effort to further conspiracy theories in an effort to erode public trust in government and dismantle our systems of democracy. Their actions are inexcusable."

Powell is one of a number of people Dominion has sued for the lie that the voting machine company rigged the election against Trump — a lie that was officially debunked in a joint Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security report in March. Dominion has also sued Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Fox News, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Sidney Powell

Michigan Attorney General May Seek Sanctions Against Powell

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Tuesday announced she may seek sanctions against Sidney Powell, the Trump-connected lawyer who has filed numerous failed lawsuits in Michigan and other states across the country to overturn the 2020 election results to wrongly keep Donald Trump in power.

Nessel made the announcement in a year-end phone call with Michigan reporters, according to Michigan political reporter Jonathan Oosting. She told reporters that she is seeking sanctions against Powell for "what we believe to be an intentional misrepresentation," Oosting reported.

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