Some Tangential Russiagate

We seem to be in another slump here. Tangential because the articles don't directly relate to Trump and Russiagate stories, but only connect indirectly.

Take for example, from Breitbart, Democrat Lawyer Behind ‘Russia Dossier’ Pressures Nevada to Allow ‘Ballot Harvesting’. It's the same crew:

A lawyer whose firm hired Fusion GPS to produce opposition research on Donald Trump leading to the phony “Russia dossier” has written to the State of Nevada pressuring it to bow to Democrat demands to allow “ballot harvesting.”

Mark Elias, a Perkins Coie lawyer who once represented Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, wrote on behalf of the Nevada Democratic Party to Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske on April 10 demanding that the state refrain from prosecuting violations of current state law, which only allows “a member of the voter’s family” to return an absentee ballot on their behalf. It is a felony for someone other than a family member to submit a ballot on someone else’s behalf.

Across the state line, in California, Democrats allow “ballot harvesting,” in which party operatives may collect and submit as many ballots as they want. (The practice is almost exclusive to Democrats; Republicans do not easily part with their ballots.) As Breitbart News has explained:

“Ballot harvesting” was legalized in California in 2016, and first used in the 2018 midterm elections. It allows anyone to drop off someone else’s mail-in ballot at a polling station. There is no process for vetting or verifying those delivering the ballots — no background checks or identification requirements. Democrats dropped hundreds of thousands of ballots off at polling stations in 2018, helping Democrats as they flipped seven Republican seats.

The practice is illegal in Nevada and most other states — as well as most other countries, where the practice is associated with fraud and corruption. Democrats, however, want to make “ballot harvesting” the law nationwide — and wanted to do so long before the coronavirus pandemic.

As Fox News noted Tuesday, Democrats now claim that “ballot harvesting” is necessary to overcome obstacles resulting from coronavirus — though they are also arguing for more in-person voting sites in Nevada, according to Elias’s letter.

To be fair, Perkin's Coie is a pretty big law firm, the represented the Smithsonian pro bono when my colleague went to patent our patented CO2 measuring device.



From the WaEx's Daniel Chaitin, Lou Dobbs: Obama endorsement of Biden 'could be' tied to Durham review

During an interview with Rep. Jim Jordan, Dobbs raised the idea that the endorsement Tuesday in the Democratic primary contest could be tied to U.S. Attorney John Durham's review of the Russia investigation.

"One has to wonder why President Obama chose this moment," Dobbs said on his show. "It could be because of reports now that John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, who's been charged by the attorney general with investigating the so-called investigators, John Brennan, the CIA director under Obama, is the leading target, we are told."

He was referring to a Wall Street Journal report earlier this month in which sources said Durham is increasingly focused on former CIA Director John Brennan and drove to Washington, D.C., to make sure the investigation stayed on track during the coronavirus outbreak.

Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, did not directly address Dobbs's thought about Obama, instead mentioning how there were a couple "key" developments last week in the so-called Russiagate controversy, including the declassification of footnotes in a Justice Department inspector general report showing the FBI received classified reports in 2017, which identified that parts of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier were likely influenced by Russian disinformation.

The Ohio congressman added that Attorney General William Barr and Durham are "getting to the bottom of this" and hopes to see the investigation end sometime in the summer.

I don't see it myself. The ball has to bounce off too many walls. Obama endorsed Biden because the actual communists in the race had dropped out.

Finally.

Last week's release of transcript between CHS & @GeorgePapa19, when read in tandem with IG Horowitz's report on FISA abuse, confirmed AG Barr's point that these weren't "just mistakes." @FDRLST https://t.co/RuNeoIFr8y 1/

— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) April 15, 2020

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links.