By Mike Huckabee
January 2, 2023
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Who --- besides me and my staff and other obsessive news-hounds --- paid really close attention to breaking stories from just before Christmas through New Year's Day? Normally, that's a low point in the news cycle, but as it happened this year, it was the time we ended up with perhaps the biggest story of 2022, the release of the "Twitter Files," which showed us how pre-selected information has been spoon-fed to us, literally for years, a deception that almost certainly changed history. And now, here's a related story that almost got lost over the weekend, but NOT QUITE. You'll be hearing more about it in the coming days.
Jason Chaffetz, subbing for Steve Hilton on Sunday's THE NEXT REVOLUTION, offered an update on a story concerning an executive order issued by President Biden just days into his administration, EO#14019, This order quietly directed executive departments and agencies to "partner with state, local, Tribal, and territorial election officials" --- even "selected and approved" non-governmental organizations --- to protect and promote the exercise of the right to vote, eliminate discrimination and other barriers to voting, and expand access to voter registration and accurate election information."
Well, that all sounds wonderful, doesn't it? On the surface, the buzzwords make it sound like something to which no one could take a legitimate exception. After all, who could possibly have a problem with "discrimination" and "accurate voter information"? Never mind what the wording of this order might mean in practice. Here's an excellent analysis from October, just before this past election. Read it and be shocked.
As Joel B. Pollack wrote in BREITBART NEWS, it "reads like a Democratic Party wish list of 'reforms.'" And that's just what it is --- probably ghostwritten by Marc Elias. One provision of the order states: "It is the responsibility of the federal government to expand access to, and education about, voter registration and election information, and to combat misinformation, in order to enable all eligible Americans to participate in our democracy."
No, it is not. By now, we know the government is not to be trusted to determine what is election "information" and "misinformation." (See Hunter's laptop.) The federal government needs to KEEP ITS GRUBBY PAWS off "our" elections, and that includes the work-around of using social media and/or any other entity as an unconstitutional intermediary. We've seen that in the name of protecting us against misinformation, they themselves are the biggest spreaders of it. The disconnect between what they say and what we observe for ourselves is so huge, it simply can't be maintained, except for the relative few who are glued to the state propagandists at MSNBC and CNN. (The border is not open? Really??)
Anyway, the administration has, according to Chaffetz, ignored public records requests surrounding the implementation of this "partnership." He points out that the federal government has no constitutional authority over elections; only state legislatures are supposed to have that. There might be multiple laws that the federal government has violated by inserting itself into elections.
An organization called the Foundation for Government Accountability has sued Biden's DOJ for stonewalling requests for details on how the feds are interjecting themselves into elections at the state level because of this executive order. Tarren Bragdon of the FGA spoke with Chaffetz, saying that Biden's order commanded the bureaucrats in "literally hundreds of federal agencies," using our tax dollars, to get involved in an intensive --- and, you can bet, highly targeted --- get-out-the-vote effort. They're not supposed to be doing this sort of thing at all.
So the FGA wants to see the plans the administration has submitted to these agencies. But even though this group won in court, all they've received are heavily redacted, essentially worthless pages. If this involvement in elections is appropriate activity, why is the administration hiding so much?
And get this: the administration has cited EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE as the reason for not releasing the requested documents. Huh?
"You know, it would be a lot easier if Elon Musk took over the Department of Justice," Bragdon quipped. "Then we'd see the files, and get the information. But instead, we're taking the Department of Justice to court, and ultimately we'll win, and see what their plans are."
He continued: "This is essentially having federal tax dollars contract with partisan groups to increase voter participation. It's what political parties do, but the President is trying to do it through executive order and our tax dollars. And this is just part of an unaccountable and out-of-control federal government. We need to put a stop to it and hold their feet to the fire, and that's exactly why we sued them." Good for them; we wish them the best of luck. Let's go, Bragdon!
Here are more details about Biden's order, in a statement the FGA put out in September 2021. Maybe now it will finally get the attention it deserves.
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The FBI was already busily inserting itself into our elections, ostensibly to counter "misinformation," but as we all know (after the fact), it ended up promoting that very thing. Over the holidays, law professor Jonathan Turley posted a great commentary about how the FBI has worked to protect the Biden family while targeting conservatives and is now even attacking its critics. That's right --- if you criticize them, YOU'RE to blame as a purveyor of disinformation! Turley has had enough and calls for a complete, top-down reform of the FBI. This is a must-read if you missed it last week.
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Speaking of the FBI and its efforts to protect the Biden administration, Margot Cleveland posted a couple of columns over the past few days detailing its relationship with Twitter and making it clear why the federal bureaucracy can NEVER be trusted to tell the truth.
You might have seen this one, as it came out right before Christmas after the release of Twitter File #7, but in case you didn't...
Her most recent column, from a few days ago, details how the FBI was working overtime to control the Biden story --- so much so that even Twitter executive and former FBI general counsel Jim Baker (of all people) was calling it "odd."
"'Odd' doesn't begin to capture the situation," writes Cleveland, "which, given the connection between those two FBI offices [Baltimore field office and FBI headquarters] and the Hunter Biden investigation, suggests a new wing to the Big Tech scandal: one in which FBI agents proactively sought out people and speech to censor for the benefit of their politician of choice."
If you're still not convinced that the FBI needs to be taken apart and put back together in a totally different way, this must-read piece at AMERICAN GREATNESS by John D. O'Connor (who doesn't sound too optimistic) should persuade you. If anything is a threat to "our democracy," it's the FBI's usurping of authority. And, yes, the institution rots from the head down, meaning FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Oh, and here's another reason why non-governmental entities should not be "partnering" with federal agencies to mitigate the spread of election "misinformation." Have you ever heard of Arabella Advisors?
"Many of the Arabella-funded research projects cite conservatives predominantly as purveyors of misinformation, with several projects recommending solutions to mitigate the spread of misinformation, including censorship," the DAILY CALLER reports. This is a must-read. Remember it the next time anyone even mentions the word "misinformation."
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