VIKTOR ORBÁN LOSES! Good Riddance you stupid, Anti-democratic, Authoritarian Control Freak, Banana Republic, Fascist Dictator Bastard!

 

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán concedes election defeat after 16 years in power

 

“Liberals Laughing at Viktor Orban”

 

 

Viktor Orban DEFEATED! Russia Loses AGAIN!

Viktor Orban’s political party was absolutely crushed in today’s Hungarian parliamentary elections. A change in Hungary’s government will lead to the unblocking of a 90 billion euro loan for Ukraine as well as the passage of additional sanctions on Russia. Russia and Donald Trump just lost their most important ally and spy inside the European Union.

 

 

 

Newsweek on X (formerly Twitter): “Trump had thrown his weight behind Viktor Orbán, calling the Hungarian prime minister a “true friend.” https://t.co/75U4YIBJi9 / X”

Trump had thrown his weight behind Viktor Orbán, calling the Hungarian prime minister a “true friend.” https://t.co/75U4YIBJi9

 

VIKTOR ORBÁN: ENEMY OF DEMOCRACY

Videos show how Autocrat Victor Orbán & his Radical Right Wing Party eliminated Democracy in Hungary by taking over the Government and turned it into a authoritarian fascist one-party-rule dictatorship where elections & the courts are rigged, all of the media is state controlled and praise for Victor Orbán Propaganda is seen everywhere. This is what Trump and Republicans want to do to the United States.

 

Description from YouTube: “Viktor Orbán has ruled over Hungary for the past 11 years. In that time, he has rewritten the country’s constitution, cemented his power, and openly confronted the European Union. He has cozied up with autocrats in Russia and China and has built an illiberal state. How did Viktor Orban come to power, and what has he done to Hungarian democracy?”

 

Thousands of solders from around the world fought and died to DEFEAT Fascism in WWII. We owe it to them and ourselves to continue fighting for freedom and against Anti-Democratic Fascist DICTATORS

 

Hungary Is a Version of What Republicans Wants For The U.S.

Chief national correspondent at the New York Times, Mark Leibovich, and former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, Frank Figliuzzi, react to Fox News’ anchor Tucker Carlson’s bizarre choice to host his show from Hungary, a country with an authoritarian regime.

Right-Wingers turned Hungary into a Anti-Democratic Fascist One-Party-Rule Dictatorship. It could happen here unless Republicans are STOPPED.

 

 

‘Dictator playdate’: Donald Trump and Hungary PM Viktor Orban set to meet again in Mar-A-Lago

Michael McFaul, Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Rick Stengel, former top state department official during the Obama Administration, and Evelyn Farkas, Executive Director of the McCain Institute join Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to Donald Trump hosting Hungary PM Viktor Orban directly on the heels of the NATO summit in Washington DC, and what it says about the future of the alliance and America’s relationship with authoritarian leaders should Donald Trump return to office.

 

How To Dismantle A Democracy

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has become a favorite among Trump-loving ethno-nationalists. Yale’s Jason Stanley and authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat break down why Orbán and the fascination with Orbán is so dangerous.

 

‘Dictator worship’: Orban visit puts Trump soft spot for dictators on display

Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants to emulate autocrats such as Putin, Kim Jong Un and Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban who visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

 

Trump Endorses Right-Wing Autocrat In Hungary

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and former FBI special agent Clint Watts discuss with Nicolle Wallace the former president’s endorsement of Viktor Orban ahead of the Parliamentary elections in Hungary.

 

This video gives insight into the oppressive laws Republicans has been passing in recent years such as anti-voting laws to rig elections in their favor, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT laws and how Russia shares many of the same anti-democratic ideals and values held by Republicans.

 

Expert Compares Trump’s Politics to Fascism

Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley explains why he claims President Donald Trump’s politics are akin to fascism, a political movement based around a leader.

 

 

The Right’s Embrace of Fascism and Authoritarianism

 

Rules of the Demagogue

 

Republicans are Fascists who want to DESTROY Democracy in the United States

 

Viktor Orban is an ally of the murderous Dictator of Russia Vladimir Putin, an enemy of Democracy who invaded Ukraine and murdered thousands of it’s citizens.

Wife of detained Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza stated; “The fact is, Mr. Putin did not become a murderous dictator overnight, he has been oppressing, throwing in prison, poisoning, and killing his opponents for years and years.”

Trump has openly been praising autocrat Dictators such Putin, Kim Jong Un and Orbán for years. ANYONE who Praises autocrat Dictators like Putin is LAWLESS scum of the earth and an enemy of Democracy and Freedom.

 

 

Per Wikipedia, the definition of Fascism is; “a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce. Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party”.

Republicans are proving they’re Anti-Democratic Authoritarian Fascist, rigging elections by Gerrymandering, Voter Obstruction, Voter Purges, Passed laws putting partisans in charge of Counting the Votes so they can Overturn Election Results, Decreasing Drop Boxes, Decreasing the days people can vote and making it illegal to give Food or Water to people waiting in the long lines in urban areas they’re responsible for causing.

Republicans refuse to eliminate the UN-Democratic Electoral College because they know they couldn’t win a Presidential election on a “One person, one vote” basis whereby the person who gets the most votes wins. They’re dependent on the UN-Democratic Electoral College which has made 2 of their unpopular candidates President who LOST the popular vote… Trump who lost by 2.8 millions votes in 2016 and George W. Bush who lost by 600,000 votes in 2000.

This isn’t Democracy… it’s the type of rigged system you find in Dictator Banana Republics where the LOSER is declared the “winner”.

 

Republicans fit all of the Characteristics of Fascism described below

Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism – Article by Dr. Lawrence Britt

1. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

2. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

3. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

4. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

5. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

6. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

7. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

8. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

9. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

10. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

11. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

12. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

13. Manipulate & Control elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate & control elections.

 

14. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump to Pam Bondi: “YOU’RE FIRED!”

Pam Bondi has been fired and may now be facing Florida Bar Council complaints

Pam Bondi did all of Donald Trump’s lawless, unconstitutional, and unethical bidding. She tried to prosecute Trump’s perceived enemies, she violated federal law by refusing to publicly release all of the Epstein files, she weaponized and misused the power of the Department of Justice in all ways large and small in service to dear leader.

But clearly it wasn’t enough. Trump just introduce Bondi to the undercarriage of a bus, firing her after little more than a year as his attorney general/consigliere.

 

PAM BONDI FIRED!

Trump got rid of Bondi because ‘she was about to be deposed’ in Epstein case

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) joins Chris Jansing to share his reaction to President Trump firing Pam Bondi and naming Todd Blanche as acting attorney general, saying Bondi was “embarrassing” and “petulant.”

 

 

Possible Reason why Bondi was fired

Trump Immunity Ruling: Federal Judge Says He’s NOT Protected

A federal judge just ruled Trump is NOT immune from Swalwell’s January 6th civil lawsuit. His speech wasn’t an official act as president — it was electioneering. And that changes everything.
On April 1st, a federal judge allowed Representative Eric Swalwell’s civil lawsuit against Donald Trump to proceed — ruling that Trump’s January 6th speech was an unofficial act, not a presidential one. Under the court’s reasoning, Trump was campaigning, not governing. And you don’t get presidential immunity for campaigning.
Swalwell’s lawsuit — filed in March 2021 alongside other members of Congress and Capitol Police officers — seeks civil damages for the trauma caused by the January 6th insurrection. With this ruling, it moves forward. That means depositions. That means discovery. That means people around Trump telling the truth under oath about what they knew and when they knew it.
This isn’t abstract legal theory. This is accountability in real time — and the judge’s logic is a direct rebuke of the immunity arguments Trump has used to shield himself everywhere else.
✂️ In this clip ⬇️
👉🏽 Why the federal judge rejected Trump’s immunity argument
👉🏽 What “unofficial act” vs “official duty” actually means legally
👉🏽 How this opens Trump to civil damages and sworn testimony
👉🏽 What Swalwell’s lawsuit seeks — and what discovery could reveal
👉🏽 Why this ruling matters beyond just one lawsuit

 

Pam Bondi FIRED After BEGGING Trump NOT TO in WH Meltdown!

 

Florida Bar Council receives complaint about Pam Bondi

Trump’s pick as the new DHS Secretary, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma proved to be a typical low intelligence Right Wing Neanderthal Republican redneck bully by challenging Teamster Union President Sean O’Brien to a fight during a hearing. They should have called for a 1 hour recess, set up a Boxing Ring with ropes and let them go at it! Would have been awesome entertainment

 

Markwayne Mullin THREATENS CHUCK SCHUMER in Fox News Freakout

Jesse talks about Markwayne Mullin’s cowardly and false attack against Senator Chuck Schumer on Fox News

 

The exchange between Sen. Markwayne Mullin and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien reminds me of the famous Roy D. Mercer Redneck recordings; “I’m gonna come down there and whop your ass!” LOL

 

Bernie Sanders intervenes and stops GOP senator from fighting a witness

 

Rand Paul confronts Mullin over calling him a ‘freaking snake’

 

Rand Paul Confronts Markwayne Mullin With Clips About ‘Low Impulse Control’ & ‘Anger’

 

Sen. Paul challenges Sen. Mullin on ‘anger issues’ during confirmation hearing

 

Rand Paul plays video of Markwayne Mullin challenging Teamsters president to fight

 

Rand Paul and Markwayne Mullin’s fiery exchange at confirmation hearing

 

Homeland Security pick Mullin grilled over anger, controversial remarks

 

Mullin Says He Regrets Calling Alex Pretti a ‘Deranged Individual’

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) expressed regret for saying that Alex Pretti was a “deranged individual” who “came in to cause max damage with a loaded pistol.” “I have a deep amount of respect for you,” Mullin told Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) when pressed on those statements. “We’ve had our differences, but I do respect you.” “I think I’ve said this privately when we had a conversation. Those words probably should have been retracted. “I went out there too fast. I was responding immediately without the facts. That’s my fault. That won’t happen as secretary.”

The United States victimization of Iran citizens began in 1953 by the CIA instigating a coup d’état to over-through the Democratically elected leader and put U.S. friendly Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in power. Known as the brutal Shah of Iran, his secret police, the SAVAK, was notorious for torturing and killing political opponents. Widespread crackdowns on protests, including the 1978 Black Friday massacre, resulted in thousands of citizen deaths. In response, he was overthrown in 1979 and students held Americans hostage in 1979 for a year.

 

Members of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign covertly negotiated with Iranian leaders to undermine incumbent President Jimmy Carter by delaying the release of 66 American hostages detained in Iran. This is another exmaple of what treasonous bastards Republicans are, who have been using unscrupious tactics to ‘win’ elections no matter what it teakes, and a fact you never hear mentioned by the press or anyone

 

The Iranian Mess Is Because Of Reagan!

Reagan’s “October Surprise” was confirmed to be true, the Ayatollah helped him get elected. Now, Trump is adding insult to injury and furthering the mess that Reagan created in Iran.

 

How the US Turned Iran Into a Dictatorship: The 1953 Coup (Documentary)

 

CIA involvement in 1953 Iranian coup

 

1953: The Coup That Still Haunts Iran

 

CIA Analyst Larry Johnson Exposes Truth on Iran War

Shah of Iran coup d’état. In spring and summer 1953, the United States, through a covert operation of the CIA called Operation Ajax, conducted from the American Embassy in Tehran, helped organize a coup d’état to overthrow the Mossadeq government. The United States CIA organized the coup which put the brutal Dictator “Shah of Iran” in power. This is why students held personnel from the United States Embassy hostage for over a year. It was retaliation for the wrongs the United States did to their country.

 

How Iran and the US went from friends to bitter foes

 

The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 Explained

 

Former CIA Analyst Tells THE TRUTH About The Ayatollah They Don’t Want You To Know

 

1953 Iranian coup d’état – Wikipedia

On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d’état that strengthened the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. It was instigated by the United Kingdom ( MI6), under the name Operation Boot and the United States ( CIA), under the name TP-AJAX Project or Operation Ajax.

On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d’état that strengthened the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. It was instigated by the United Kingdom (MI6), under the name Operation Boot[5][6][7][8] and the United States (CIA), under the name TP-AJAX Project[9] or Operation Ajax. A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mosaddegh nationalized the country’s oil industry.[10][11][12]

Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP), to verify that AIOC was paying the contracted royalties to Iran, and to limit their control over Iranian oil reserves.[13] Upon the AIOC’s refusal to cooperate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country.[14][15][16] After this vote, Britain instigated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically.[17] Initially, Britain mobilized its military to seize control of the British-built Abadan oil refinery, then the world’s largest, but Prime Minister Clement Attlee opted instead to tighten the economic boycott[18] while using agents to undermine Mosaddegh’s government.[19]: 3  Judging Mosaddegh to be unamenable and fearing the growing influence of the communist Tudeh, UK prime minister Winston Churchill decided in early 1953 to solicit the Eisenhower administration and overthrow Iran’s government. The preceding Truman administration had opposed a coup, fearing the precedent that Central Intelligence Agency involvement would set,[19]: 3  and the U.S. government had been considering unilateral action (without UK support) to assist the Mosaddegh government as late as 1952.[20][21][22] British intelligence and the UK government’s solicitations to the US were instrumental in initiating and planning the coup.

Following the coup, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran (Persian for ‘king’),[23] to rule more firmly as monarch. He relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power.[14][15][page needed][16][page needed][24] According to the CIA’s declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-shah riots on 19 August.[10] Other men paid by the CIA were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks and took over the streets of the city.[25] Between 200[3] and 300[4] people were killed because of the conflict. Mosaddegh was arrested, tried and convicted of treason by the Shah’s military court. On 21 December 1953, he was sentenced to three years in jail, then placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.[26]: 280 [27][28][page needed] Other Mosaddegh supporters were imprisoned, and several received the death penalty.[16] The coup strengthened the Shah’s authority, and he continued to rule Iran for the next 26 years as a pro-Western monarch[15][16] until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.[15][16][19][29]

In August 2013, the U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup by releasing a bulk of previously classified government documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup. According to American journalist Stephen Kinzer, the operation included false flag attacks, paid protesters, provocations, the bribing of Iranian politicians and high-ranking security and army officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.[30][11][31][32][page needed] The CIA is quoted as acknowledging the coup was carried out “under CIA direction” and “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government”.[33] In 2023, the CIA took credit for the coup,[34] which some scholars had previously disagreed with[35][36] while others agreed that the U.S. and Britain had engineered the coup.[37][clarification needed]
Background
Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Prime Minister of Iran in 1951

Throughout the 19th century, Iran was caught between two advancing imperial powers, Russia and Britain. In 1892, the British diplomat George Curzon described Iran as “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world.”[38]: 32 [39] During the latter half of the 19th century, the concession policies of the monarchy faced increased opposition. In 1872, a representative of British entrepreneur Paul Reuter met with the Iranian monarch Naser al-Din Shah Qajar and agreed to fund the monarch’s upcoming lavish visit to Europe in return for exclusive contracts for Iranian roads, telegraphs, mills, factories, extraction of resources, and other public works, in which Reuter would receive a stipulated sum for five years and 60% of all the net revenue for 20 years. However, the Reuter concession was never put into effect because of violent opposition at home and from Russia.[28]: 12  In 1892 the Shah was forced to revoke a tobacco monopoly given to Major G. F. Talbot, following protests and a widespread tobacco boycott.

In 1901, Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar granted a 60-year petroleum search concession to William Knox D’Arcy.[19]: 33  D’Arcy paid £20,000 (equivalent to £2.6 million in 2023[40]), according to journalist-turned-historian Stephen Kinzer, and promised equal ownership shares, with 16% of any future net profit, as calculated by the company.[19]: 48  However, the historian L. P. Elwell-Sutton wrote, in 1955, that “Persia’s share was ‘hardly spectacular’ and no money changed hands.”[28]: 15  On 31 July 1907, D’Arcy withdrew from his private holdings in Persia, and transferred them to the British-owned Burmah Oil Company.[28]: 17  On 26 May 1908, British geologist George Bernard Reynolds struck oil at a depth of 1,180 feet (360 m).[28]: 19  The company grew slowly until World War I, when Persia’s strategic importance led the British government to buy a controlling share in the company, essentially nationalizing British oil production in Iran.[citation needed]

The British angered the Persians by intervening in their domestic affairs, including in the Persian Constitutional Revolution.[41][42][43] Massive popular protests had forced Mozzafar al-Din Shah to allow for the Constitution of 1906, which limited his powers. It allowed for a parliament elected by the people to make the laws, and a prime minister to sign and carry them out. The prime minister would be confirmed by the shah after a vote in Parliament. Nevertheless, the new constitution gave the shah many executive powers as well. It allowed for the shah to issue royal decrees (Farman), gave him the power to dismiss prime ministers, appoint half of the members of the Senate (which was not convened until 1949),[16] and introduce bills to dissolve Parliament.[44][45] It abolished arbitrary rule, but the shah served as an executive, rather than in a ceremonial role.[45] The Constitutional Revolution was opposed by the British and Russians, who attempted to subvert it through the backing of Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar (the son of Mozzafar-e-din Shah), who tried to break up the democratic government by force. A guerrilla movement led by Sattar Khan deposed him in 1910.[44][45]

In the aftermath of World War I there was widespread political dissatisfaction with the royalty terms of the British petroleum concession, under the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), whereby Persia received 16% of “net profits”.[19] In 1921, after years of severe mismanagement under the Qajar dynasty, a coup d’état (allegedly backed by the British) brought a general, Reza Khan, into the government. By 1923, he had become prime minister, and gained a reputation as an effective politician with a lack of corruption.[44][page needed] By 1925 under his influence, Parliament voted to remove Ahmad Shah Qajar from the throne, and Reza Khan was crowned Reza Shah Pahlavi, of the Pahlavi dynasty. Reza Shah began a rapid and successful modernization program in Persia, which up until that point had been considered to be among the most impoverished countries in the world.[44] Nevertheless, Reza Shah was also a very harsh ruler who did not tolerate dissent. By the 1930s, he had suppressed all opposition, and had sidelined the democratic aspects of the constitution. Opponents were jailed and in some cases even executed. While some agreed with his policies, arguing that it was necessary as Iran was in such turmoil, others argued that it was unjustified.[44][page needed] One such opponent was a politician named Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was jailed in 1940. The experience gave him a lasting dislike for authoritarian rule and monarchy, and it helped make Mosaddegh a dedicated advocate of complete oil nationalization in Iran.[15][page needed]

Reza Shah attempted to attenuate the power of the colonial forces in Iran, and was successful to a large extent. However, he also needed them to help modernize the country. He did so by balancing the influence of various colonial powers, including that of Britain and Germany.[44] In the 1930s, Reza Shah tried to terminate the APOC concession that the Qajar dynasty had granted, but Iran was still weak and Britain would not allow it. The concession was renegotiated on terms again favorable to the British (although the D’Arcy Concession was softened).[44][page needed] On 21 March 1935, Reza Shah changed the name of the country from Persia to Iran. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was then renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC).[46]

In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, British and Soviet forces invaded and occupied Iran, which was largely unopposed by the Iranian government and military. After World War II had broken out, Reza Shah had declared Iran’s neutrality, and attempted to appease the British, Soviets and Germans, all of whom maintained a degree of influence in Iran.[16][44] The primary reasons behind the Anglo-Soviet invasion was to remove German influence in Iran and secure control over Iran’s oil fields and the Trans-Iranian Railway in order to deliver supplies to the USSR. Reza Shah was deposed and exiled by the British to South Africa, and his 22-year-old son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed as the new Shah of Iran.[16] Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was supported by the Allies because they viewed him as being less able to act against their interests in Iran. The new Shah, unlike his father, was initially a mild leader and at times indecisive. During the 1940s he did not for most part take an independent role in the government, and much of Reza Shah’s authoritarian policies were rolled back. Iranian democracy effectively was restored during this period as a result.[16][44]

The British occupation force withdrew from Iran after the end of the war. However, under Stalin, the Soviet Union partly remained by sponsoring two People’s Democratic Republics within Iran’s borders. The related conflict was ended when the US lobbied for the Iranian Army to reassert control over the two occupied territories. The earlier agreed-upon Soviet-Iranian oil agreement would never be honored.[16] Nationalist leaders in Iran became influential by looking for a reduction in long-term foreign interventions in their country—especially the oil concession which was very profitable for the West and not very profitable for Iran.

U.S. objectives in the Middle East remained the same between 1947 and 1952 but its strategy changed. Washington remained “publicly in solidarity and privately at odds” with Britain, its World War II ally. Britain’s empire was steadily weakening, and with an eye on international crises, the U.S. re-appraised its interests and the risks of being identified with British colonial interests. “In Saudi Arabia, to Britain’s extreme disapproval, Washington endorsed the arrangement between ARAMCO and Saudi Arabia in the 50/50 accord that had reverberations throughout the region.”[47]: 34–35

Iran’s oil had been discovered and later controlled by the British-owned AIOC.[48] Popular discontent with the AIOC began in the late 1940s: a large segment of Iran’s public and a number of politicians saw the company as exploitative and a central tool of continued British imperialism in Iran.[14][38]: 59
Oil nationalization crisis
Main article: Nationalization of the Iranian oil industry
Assassination attempt on the Shah; Mosaddegh becomes prime minister

In 1949, an assassin attempted to kill the Shah. Shocked by the experience and emboldened by public sympathy for his injury, the Shah began to take an increasingly active role in politics. He quickly organized the Iran Constituent Assembly to amend the constitution to increase his powers. He established the Senate of Iran, which had been a part of the Constitution of 1906 but had never been convened. The Shah had the right to appoint half the senators, and he chose men sympathetic to his aims.[16] Mosaddegh thought this increase in the Shah’s political power was not democratic; he believed that the Shah should “reign, but not rule” in a manner similar to Europe’s constitutional monarchies. Led by Mosaddegh, political parties and opponents of the Shah’s policies banded together to form a coalition known as the National Front.[16] Oil nationalization was a major policy goal for the coalition.[49]
Hossein Fatemi, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs

By 1951, the National Front had won majority seats for the popularly elected Majlis (Parliament of Iran). According to Iran’s constitution, the majority elected party in the parliament would choose its prime minister candidate by vote, after which the Shah would confirm the candidate to power. The Prime Minister Haj Ali Razmara, who opposed the oil nationalization,[14]: 30, 33  was assassinated by the hardline Fadaiyan e-Islam (whose spiritual leader was the Ayatollah Abol-Qassem Kashani, a mentor to the future Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,[page needed]). After the National Front dominated the voting in Parliament, Mosaddegh was confirmed prime minister of Iran by the Shah (replacing Hossein Ala, who had replaced Razmara). Under heavy pressure by the National Front, the assassin of Razmara (Khalil Tahmasebi) was released and pardoned.[14]: 34–35, 86  For the time being, Mosaddegh and Kashani were allies of convenience, as Mosaddegh saw that Kashani could mobilize the “religious masses”, while Kashani wanted Mosaddegh to drive out British and other foreign influence.[14]: 7 [16] Kashani’s Fadaiyan mobs often violently attacked the opponents of nationalization and opponents of the National Front government, as well as “immoral objects”, acting at times as unofficial “enforcers” for the movement.[14]: 11, 30  However, by late 1952 Mosaddegh was becoming increasingly opposed to Kashani, as the latter was contributing to mass political instability in Iran. Kashani in turn, berated Mosaddegh for not “Islamizing” Iran, as he (Mosaddegh) was a firm believer in the separation of religion and state.[14]: 76

The Shah and his new prime minister Mosaddegh had an antagonistic relationship. Part of the problem stemmed from the fact that Mosaddegh was connected by blood to the former royal Qajar dynasty, and saw the Pahlavi king as a usurper to the throne. But the real issue stemmed from the fact that Mosaddegh represented a pro-democratic force that wanted to temper the Shah’s rule in Iranian politics. He wanted the Shah to be a ceremonial monarch rather than a ruling monarch, thus giving the elected government power instead of the un-elected Shah. While the constitution of Iran gave the Shah the power to rule directly, Mosaddegh used the united National Front bloc and the widespread popular support for the oil nationalization vote (the latter which the Shah supported as well) in order to block the Shah’s ability to act. As a result, the oil nationalization issue became increasingly intertwined with Mosaddegh’s pro-democracy movement. The dejected Shah was angered by Mosaddegh’s “insolence” (according to Abbas Milani, he angrily paced in the rooms of his palace at the thought that he would be reduced to a figurehead). But Mosaddegh and the oil nationalization’s popularity prevented the Shah from acting against his prime minister (which was allowed under Iran’s constitution), something that Mosaddegh felt a king had no right to do. In 1952 the Shah dismissed Mosaddegh, replacing him with Ahmad Qavam (a veteran prime minister). But widespread protests by Mosaddegh supporters resulted in the Shah immediately reinstating him.[16][page needed]
Oil nationalization, the Abadan crisis, and rising tensions
Further information: Abadan Crisis and Abadan Crisis timeline

In late 1951, Iran’s Parliament in a near unanimous vote approved the oil nationalization agreement. The bill was widely popular among most Iranians, and generated a huge wave of nationalism, and immediately put Iran at loggerheads with Britain (the handful of MPs that disagreed with it voted for it as well in the face of overwhelming popular support, and the Fadaiyan’s wrath).[14][50] The nationalization made Mosaddegh instantly popular among millions of Iranians, cementing him as a national hero, and placing him and Iran at the center of worldwide attention.[14][16][50]

Britain now faced the newly elected nationalist government in Iran where Mosaddegh, with strong backing of the Iranian parliament and people, demanded more favorable concessionary arrangements, which Britain vigorously opposed.[47]

The U.S. State Department not only rejected Britain’s demand that it continue to be the primary beneficiary of Iranian oil reserves, but “U.S. international oil interests were among the beneficiaries of the concessionary arrangements that followed nationalization.”[47]: 35

Mohammad Mosaddegh attempted to negotiate with the AIOC, but the company rejected his proposed compromise. Mosaddegh’s plan, based on the 1948 compromise between the Venezuelan Government of Rómulo Gallegos and Creole Petroleum,[51] would divide the profits from oil 50/50 between Iran and Britain. Against the recommendation of the United States, Britain refused this proposal and began planning to undermine and overthrow the Iranian government.[49]

In July 1951, the American diplomat Averell Harriman went to Iran to negotiate an Anglo-Iranian compromise, asking the Shah’s help; his reply was that “in the face of public opinion, there was no way he could say a word against nationalisation”.[19]: 106  Harriman held a press conference in Tehran, calling for reason and enthusiasm in confronting the “nationalisation crisis”. As soon as he spoke, a journalist rose and shouted: “We and the Iranian people all support Premier Mosaddegh and oil nationalisation!” Everyone present began cheering and then marched out of the room; the abandoned Harriman shook his head in dismay.[19]: 106

On a visit to the United States in October 1951, Mosaddegh—in spite of the popularity of nationalization in Iran—agreed in talks with George C. McGhee to a complex settlement of the crisis involving the sale of the Abadan Refinery to a non-British company and Iranian control of the extraction of crude oil. The US waited until Winston Churchill became prime minister to present the deal, believing he would be more flexible, but the deal was rejected by the British.[52]

By September 1951, the British had virtually ceased Abadan oil field production, forbidden British export to Iran of key British commodities (including sugar and steel),[19]: 110  and had frozen Iran’s hard currency accounts in British banks.[53] British Prime Minister Clement Attlee considered seizing the Abadan Oil Refinery by force, but instead settled on an embargo by the Royal Navy, stopping any ship transporting Iranian oil for carrying so-called “stolen property”. On his re-election as prime minister, Winston Churchill took an even harder stance against Iran.[14][page needed][19]: 145

The United Kingdom took its anti-nationalization case against Iran to the International Court of Justice at The Hague; PM Mosaddegh said the world would learn of a “cruel and imperialistic country” stealing from a “needy and naked people”. The court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over the case. Nevertheless, the British continued to enforce the embargo of Iranian oil. In August 1952, Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh invited an American oil executive to visit Iran and the Truman administration welcomed the invitation. However, the suggestion upset Churchill, who insisted that the U.S. not undermine his campaign to isolate Mosaddegh because of British support for the U.S. in the Korean War.[19]: 145

In mid-1952, Britain’s embargo of Iranian oil was devastatingly effective. British agents in Tehran “worked to subvert” the government of Mosaddegh, who sought help from President Truman and then the World Bank but to no avail. “Iranians were becoming poorer and unhappier by the day” and Mosaddegh’s political coalition was fraying. To make matters worse, the Speaker of the Parliament Ayatollah Kashani, Mosaddegh’s main clerical supporter, became increasingly opposed to the Prime Minister, because Mosaddegh was squeezing him out of power. By 1953, he had completely turned on him, and supported the coup, depriving Mosaddegh of religious support, while giving it to the Shah.[14]: 97  He was joined in this by a young and relatively unknown mullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s future revolutionary supreme leader who also condemned the Mossadegh government.[54]

While the National Front, which often supported Mosaddegh, won handily in the big cities, there was no one to monitor voting in the rural areas. Violence broke out in Abadan and other parts of the country where elections were hotly contested. Faced with having to leave Iran for The Hague where Britain was suing for control of Iranian oil, Mosaddegh’s cabinet voted to postpone the remainder of the election until after the return of the Iranian delegation from The Hague:[19]: 136–37

While Mosaddegh dealt with political challenge, he faced another that most Iranians considered far more urgent. The British blockade of Iranian seaports meant that Iran was left without access to markets where it could sell its oil. The embargo had the effect of causing Iran to spiral into bankruptcy. Tens of thousands had lost their jobs at the Abadan refinery, and although most understood and passionately supported the idea of nationalisation, they naturally hoped that Mosaddegh would find a way to put them back to work. The only way he could do that was to sell oil.[19]: 136–37

To make matters worse, the Communist Tudeh Party, which supported the Soviet Union and had attempted to kill the Shah only four years earlier, began to infiltrate the military[55] and send mobs to “support Mosaddegh” (but in reality to marginalize all non-Communist opponents). Earlier, the Tudeh had denounced Mosaddegh, but by 1953 they changed tack and decided to “support” him.[56] The Tudeh violently attacked opponents under the guise of helping the prime minister (the cousin of the future queen of Iran, Farah Pahlavi, was stabbed at the age of 13 in his school by Tudeh activists),[15] and unwittingly helped cause Mosaddegh’s reputation to decline, despite the fact that he never officially endorsed them.[16] However, by 1953 he and the Tudeh had formed an unofficial alliance of convenience with each other; the Tudeh were the “foot soldiers” for his government, effectively replacing the Fadaiyan in that role, all the while secretly hoping that Mosaddegh would institute communism.[14][16]

Worried about Britain’s other interests in Iran, and thanks to the Tudeh Party,[16] believing that Iran’s nationalism was really a Soviet-backed plot, Britain persuaded US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that Iran was falling to the Soviets—effectively exploiting the American Cold War mindset. Since President Harry S. Truman was busy fighting a war in Korea, he did not agree to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. However, in 1953, when Dwight D. Eisenhower became president, the UK convinced the U.S. to undertake a joint coup d’état.[19]: 82
Final months of Mosaddegh’s government
Pro-Mosaddegh protests in Tehran, 16 August 1953

By 1953, economic tensions caused by the British embargo and political turmoil began to take a major toll on Mosaddegh’s popularity and political power. He was increasingly blamed for the economic and political crisis. Political violence was becoming widespread in the form of street clashes between rival political groups.[14][16] Mosaddegh was losing popularity and support among the working class which had been his strongest supporters. As he lost support, he became more autocratic.[56][57] As early as August 1952, he began to rely on emergency powers to rule, generating controversy among his supporters.[57] After an assassination attempt upon one of his cabinet ministers and himself, he ordered the jailing of dozens of his political opponents. This act created widespread anger among the general public, and led to accusations that Mosaddegh was becoming a dictator.[14][16] The Tudeh Party’s unofficial alliance with Mosaddegh led to fears of communism, and increasingly it was the communists who were taking part in pro-Mosaddegh rallies and attacking opponents.[14][16]

By mid-1953 a mass of resignations by Mosaddegh’s parliamentary supporters reduced the National Front seats in Parliament. A referendum to dissolve parliament and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to voters, and it passed with 99.9 percent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes against.[26]: 274  The referendum was widely seen by opponents as treason and an act against the Shah, who was stripped of military power and control over national resources. This act would be one of many key factors in a chain of events leading to Mosaddegh’s deposition.[14][16]

The Shah himself initially opposed the coup plans and supported the oil nationalization, but he joined in after being informed by the CIA that he too would be “deposed” if he didn’t play along. The experience left him with a lifelong awe of American power and would contribute to his pro-US policies while generating a hatred of the British.[16] Mosaddegh’s decision to dissolve Parliament also contributed to his decision.[16]
Execution of Operation Ajax
Mohammad Mosaddegh, the leader of National Front and the elected Prime Minister of Iran

The official pretext for the start of the coup was Mosaddegh’s decree to dissolve Parliament, giving himself and his cabinet complete power to rule, while effectively stripping the Shah of his powers.[14][15][16] It resulted in him being accused of giving himself “total and dictatorial powers.” The Shah, who had been resisting the CIA’s demands for the coup, finally agreed to support it.[14][15][16] Having obtained the Shah’s concurrence, the CIA executed the coup.[58] Firmans (royal decrees) dismissing Mosaddegh and appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi (a loyalist who had helped Reza Shah reunify Iran decades earlier)[15] were drawn up by the coup plotters and signed by the Shah. Having signed the decrees and delivered them to General Zahedi, he and Queen Soraya departed for a week-long vacation in northern Iran.[59] On Saturday 15 August, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, the commander of the Imperial Guard, along with other elements of his military network, arrested various members of Mosaddegh’s government, including Mossadegh’s deputy Chief of Staff Kiyani, Hoseyn Fatami, the pro-Mosadegh deputy Zirakzadeh, and his Minister of Roads, Haqshenas; the military proceeded to seize and neutralise the telephone centre in Tehran that processed and serviced all calls to and from key government buildings.[60] Mosaddegh had been warned of the plans to overthrow his government by the Tudeh Party, whose cells had infiltrated the military, and as such, Mossadegh was able to avoid arrest.[61] On Sunday 16 August, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri,[15] delivered to Mosaddegh the firman from the Shah dismissing him, but Mossadegh rejected the firman and had Nassiri arrested.[62][63][64] According to Mosaddegh, he rejected the firman for several reasons – in court, he claimed that he was suspicious of the authenticity of the firman; that he believed the date of the firman had been tampered with and was issued prior to the dissolution of the Majles and thus was unconstitutional as the Shah had not acquired the approval of the Majles; that the edict being concurrent with a series of military operations against his government the day before had led him to believe that this was a foreign coup in the guise of a royal edict;[65] while in a meeting with Loy W. Henderson on 18 August, Mossadegh argued that regardless of the authenticity of any firman dismissing him, he would ignore it, as in his view, the Shah had no authority to dismiss him as a purely constitutional monarch.[66] Mosaddegh’s supporters took to the streets in violent protests.[14] Following the failed coup attempt, the Shah, accompanied by his second wife Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari and Aboul Fath Atabay[67] fled to Baghdad. Arriving unannounced, the Shah asked for permission for himself and his consort to stay in Baghdad for a few days before continuing on to Europe.[59] After high-level Government consultations, they were escorted to the White House, the Iraqi Government’s guest house, before flying to Italy in a plane flown by Mohammad Amir Khatami.[67]

After the first coup attempt failed, General Zahedi, along with his son, Ardeshir Zahedi, Gilanshah, and the Rashidiyan brothers, all took refuge in the safe custody of a CIA station in Tehran.[68] Mosaddegh ordered security forces to capture the coup plotters, and dozens were imprisoned. Believing that he had succeeded, and that he was in full control of the government, Mosaddegh erred. Assuming that the coup had failed, he asked his supporters to return to their homes and to continue with their lives as normal. The Tudeh party members also returned to their homes, no longer carrying out enforcement duties.[15][16] The CIA was ordered to leave Iran, although Kermit Roosevelt Jr. was slow to receive the message—allegedly due to MI6 interference—and eagerly continued to foment anti-Mosaddegh unrest. The Eisenhower administration considered changing its policy to support Mosaddegh, with undersecretary of state Walter Bedell Smith remarking on 17 August: “Whatever his faults, Mosaddegh had no love for the Russians and timely aid might enable him to keep Communism in check.”[69]
Nematollah Nassiri

General Zahedi, who was still on the run, secretly met with the pro-Shah Ayatollah Mohammad Behbahani and other Shah supporters. Backed by CIA money (derisively known as “Behbahani dollars”), they developed a strategy to stoke class and religious resentment toward the Mosaddegh government. The Shah’s flight from Iran, Mosaddegh’s arrests of political opponents, and fears of communism had already soured many upper-class Iranians on the prime minister. The plotters sought to capitalize on these anxieties. The Ayatollah Behbahani also used his influence to rally religious demonstrators against Mosaddegh.[15][page needed][16][page needed]

On 19 August, Mosaddegh issued a decree banning all demonstrations on that day. However, mobilization of crowds and street protests widely believed to have been organized with CIA assistance, had occurred to create the impression of popular unrest and opposition to Mosaddegh’s government.[11][70] Bloody street battles were observed to have broken out in Tehran between Tudeh Party activists and right wing parties, whose offices were attacked by the communists. At the same time pro-Shah crowds began gathering in the streets.[16] By the middle of the day, large crowds of regular citizens, armed with improvised weapons, took to the streets in mass demonstrations, and beat back the Tudeh Party members. Under Zahedi’s authority, the army left its barracks and drove off the communist Tudeh and then stormed all government buildings with the support of demonstrators. Mosaddegh fled after a tank fired a single shell into his house, but he later turned himself in to the army’s custody. To prevent further bloodshed, he refused a last attempt to organize his supporters.[71] By the end of the day, Zahedi and the army were in control of the government.[14][15][16]

According to Hugh Wilford in his book published in 2013, despite the CIA’s role in creating the conditions for the coup, there was little evidence to prove that Kermit Roosevelt Jr. or other CIA officials were directly responsible for the actions of the demonstrators or the army on 19 August. It has even been suggested that Roosevelt’s activities between 15 and 19 August were primarily intended to organize “stay-behind networks as part of the planned CIA evacuation of the country”, although they allowed him to later “claim responsibility for the day’s outcome.”[72] In 2014, historian Ray Takeyh stated that the US-led coup attempt was unsuccessful, citing how the CIA wrote to Eisenhower that “The move failed […] We now […] probably have to snuggle up to Mosaddeq if we’re going to save [our influence in Iran];” the demonstrations that led to Mosaddegh’s resignation took place some weeks after the Roosevelt-organized ones, and were composed of average citizens, not the thugs-for-hire that the CIA and MI6 had recruited.[36] Also in 2014, on the other hand, historian Ali Rahnema writes that the British and the Americans had a contingency plan in place in case the firman dismissing Mosaddegh had failed; in a joint SIS-CIA meeting in mid-June 1953, they had planned that if Mosaddegh was to reject the firman dismissing him, Asadollah Rashidiyan would use CIA and SIS funds to unleash his network of ruffians, thugs, and supporters among the underclass, in Southern Tehran to stage mass protests against the government, before being joined by the military.[73] Meanwhile, in 2017, the CIA released documents revealing that the networks established by British intelligence services had been used to run a campaign of propaganda and paid-for protests, resulting in the rapid destabilization of the nation.[74] Scholars Roham Alvandi and Mark J. Gasiorowski wrote in 2019, Ray Takeyh’s view would be based on a “deeply flawed and highly selective reading” of the available evidence.[75]

The Shah stayed in a hotel in Italy until he learned what had transpired, upon which he “chokingly declared”: “I knew they loved me.”[3] Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, flew back with the Shah from Rome to Tehran.[76] Zahedi officially replaced Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh was arrested, tried, and originally sentenced to death. But on the Shah’s personal orders, his sentence was commuted[15][16][77][78] to three years’ solitary confinement in a military prison, followed by house arrest until his death.[79]
United States’ role

As a condition for restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, in 1954 the US required removal of the AIOC’s monopoly; five American petroleum companies, Royal Dutch Shell, and the Compagnie Française des Pétroles, were to draw Iran’s petroleum after the successful coup d’état—Operation Ajax. The Shah declared this to be a “victory” for Iranians, with the massive influx of money from this agreement resolving the economic collapse from the last three years, and allowing him to carry out his planned modernization projects.[16]

As part of that, the CIA organized anti-Communist guerrillas to fight the Tudeh Party if they seized power in the chaos of Operation Ajax.[80] Released National Security Archive documents showed that Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had agreed with Qashqai tribal leaders, in south Iran, to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and spies could operate.[80][81]

The CIA sent Major General Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. to persuade the exiled Shah to return to rule Iran. Schwarzkopf trained the security forces that would become known as SAVAK to secure the shah’s hold on power.[82]

According to a heavily redacted CIA document[83] released to the National Security Archive in response to a Freedom of Information request, “Available documents do not indicate who authorized CIA to begin planning the operation, but it almost certainly was President Eisenhower himself. Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose has written that the absence of documentation reflected the President’s style.”

The CIA document then quotes from the Ambrose biography of Eisenhower:

Before going into the operation, Ajax had to have the approval of the President. Eisenhower participated in none of the meetings that set up Ajax; he received only oral reports on the plan; and he did not discuss it with his Cabinet or the NSC. Establishing a pattern he would hold to throughout his Presidency, he kept his distance and left no documents behind that could implicate the President in any projected coup. But in the privacy of the Oval Office, over cocktails, he was kept informed by Foster Dulles, and he maintained a tight control over the activities of the CIA.[84]

Confirmation for execution of Operation Ajax

One version of the CIA history, written by Wilber, referred to the operation as TPAJAX.[85][86]

A tactic Roosevelt admitted to using, was bribing demonstrators into attacking symbols of the Shah, while chanting pro-Mosaddegh slogans. As king, the Shah was largely seen as a symbol of Iran at the time by many Iranians and monarchists. Roosevelt declared that the more that these agents showed their hate for the Shah and attacked his symbols, the more it caused the average Iranian citizen to dislike and distrust Mosaddegh.[87]
Shaban Jafari, commonly known as Shaban the Brainless (Shaban Bimokh), was a notable pro-Shah strongman and thug. He led his men and other bribed street thugs and was a prominent figure during the coup.

The British and American spy agencies strengthened the monarchy in Iran by backing the pro-western Shah for the next 26 years. The Shah was overthrown in 1979.[19][88] Some Iranian clerics cooperated with the western spy agencies because they were dissatisfied with Mosaddegh’s secular government.[89]
Fazlollah Zahedi

While the broad outlines of the operation are known, “…the C.I.A.’s records were widely thought by historians to have the potential to add depth and clarity to a famous but little-documented intelligence operation”, reporter Tim Weiner wrote in The New York Times 29 May 1997.[90]

“The Central Intelligence Agency, which has repeatedly pledged for more than five years to make public the files from its secret mission to overthrow the government of Iran in 1953, said today that it had destroyed or lost almost all the documents decades ago.”[90][91][92]

Donald Wilber, one of the CIA officers who planned the 1953 coup in Iran, wrote an account titled, Clandestine Service History Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran: November 1952 – August 1953. Wilber said one goal of the coup was to strengthen the Shah. In 2000, James Risen at The New York Times obtained the previously secret CIA version of the coup written by Wilber and summarized[93] its contents, which includes the following:

In early August, the CIA increased the pressure. Iranian operatives pretending to be Communists threatened Muslim leaders with “savage punishment if they opposed Mosaddegh”, seeking to stir anti-Communist sentiment in the religious community.

In addition, the secret history says, the house of at least one prominent Muslim was bombed by CIA agents posing as Communists. It does not say whether anyone was hurt in this attack.

The agency was intensifying its propaganda campaign. A leading newspaper owner was granted a personal loan of about $45,000, “in the belief that this would make his organ amenable to our purposes.”

The Shah remained intransigent. In a 1 August meeting with General Norman Schwarzkopf, he refused to sign the C.I.A.-written decrees firing Mr. Mosaddegh and appointing General Zahedi. He said he doubted that the army would support him in a showdown.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University contains the full account by Wilber, along with many other coup-related documents and analysis.[94][95][96]
Release of U.S. government records and official acknowledgement

In August 2013, on the 60th anniversary of the coup, the US government released documents showing they were involved in staging the coup. The documents also describe the motivations behind the coup and the strategies used to stage it.[7] The UK had sought to censor information regarding its role in the coup; a significant number of documents about the coup remained classified.[31] The release of the declassified documents, which marked the first US official acknowledgement of its role, was seen as a goodwill gesture on the part of the Obama administration.[97][31] According to Aljazeera, the deputy director of the National Security Archive, Malcolm Byrne, disclosed that the CIA documented the secret histories purposely for official use.[98]

Public awareness of American and British participation in Mosaddeq’s overthrow was long-standing. An internal narrative from the middle of the 1970s called “The Battle for Iran” makes a clear reference to the CIA’s involvement. In 1981, the agency made a highly edited version of the report public in reaction to an ACLU lawsuit, but it blocked out all mentions of TPAJAX, the code name for the American-led operation. These references can be found in the most recent release in 2013, which is thought to be the CIA’s first official admission that the agency assisted in the coup’s planning and execution.[99]

In June 2017, the United States State Department’s Office of the Historian released its revised historical account of the event. The volume of historical records “focuses on the evolution of U.S. thinking on Iran as well as the U.S. Government covert operation that resulted in Mosadeq’s overthrow on 19 August 1953”.[100] Though some of the relevant records were destroyed long ago, the release contains a collection of roughly 1,000 pages, only a small number of which remain classified.[101] One revelation is that the CIA “attempted to call off the failing coup but was salvaged by an insubordinate spy.”[102] The reports released by the U.S. had reached 1,007 pages, consisting of diplomatic cables and letters according to VOA News.[103]

In March 2018, the National Security Archive released a declassified British memo alleging that the United States Embassy sent “large sums of money” to “influential people”—namely senior Iranian clerics—in the days leading up to Mosaddeq’s overthrow.[104] According to the Guardian, despite the U.S. showing regrets about the coup, it has failed to officially issue an apology over its involvement.[105]
United States financial support

The CIA paid a large sum to carry out the operation. Depending on the expenses to be counted, the final cost is estimated to vary from $100,000 to $20 million. CIA gave Zahedi’s government $5 million after the coup[19][page needed] with Zahedi himself receiving an extra million.[38]
United States motives

Historians disagree on what motivated the United States to change its policy towards Iran and stage the coup. Middle East historian Ervand Abrahamian identified the coup d’état as “a classic case of nationalism clashing with imperialism in the Third World”. He states that Secretary of State Dean Acheson admitted the “‘Communist threat’ was a smokescreen” in responding to President Eisenhower’s claim that the Tudeh Party was about to assume power:[106]

Throughout the crisis, the “communist danger” was more of a rhetorical device than a real issue—i.e. it was part of the cold-war discourse …The Tudeh was no match for the armed tribes and the 129,000-man military. What is more, the British and Americans had enough inside information to be confident that the party had no plans to initiate armed insurrection. At the beginning of the crisis, when the Truman administration was under the impression a compromise was possible, Acheson had stressed the communist danger, and warned if Mosaddegh was not helped, the Tudeh would take over. The (British) Foreign Office had retorted that the Tudeh was no real threat. But, in August 1953, when the Foreign Office echoed the Eisenhower administration’s claim that the Tudeh was about to take over, Acheson now retorted that there was no such communist danger. Acheson was honest enough to admit that the issue of the Tudeh was a smokescreen.[106]

Abrahamian states that Iran’s oil was the central focus of the coup, for both the British and the Americans, though “much of the discourse at the time linked it to the Cold War”.[107] Abrahamian wrote, “If Mosaddegh had succeeded in nationalizing the British oil industry in Iran, that would have set an example and was seen at that time by the Americans as a threat to U.S. oil interests throughout the world, because other countries would do the same.”[107] Mosaddegh did not want any compromise solution that allowed a degree of foreign control. Abrahamian said that Mosaddegh “wanted real nationalization, both in theory and practice”.[107]
Pro-shah sympathizers

Political theorist John Tirman points out that agricultural land owners were politically dominant in Iran well into the 1960s, and the monarch Reza Shah’s aggressive land expropriation policies—to the benefit of himself and his supporters—resulted in the Iranian government being Iran’s largest land owner. “The landlords and oil producers had new backing, moreover, as American interests were for the first time exerted in Iran. The Cold War was starting, and Soviet challenges were seen in every leftist movement. But the reformers were at root nationalists, not communists, and the issue that galvanized them above all others was the control of oil.”[108] The belief that oil was the central motivator behind the coup has been echoed in the popular media by authors such as Robert Byrd,[109] Alan Greenspan,[110] and Ted Koppel.[111]

Middle East political scientist Mark Gasiorowski states that while, on the face of it, there is considerable merit to the argument that U.S. policymakers helped U.S. oil companies gain a share in Iranian oil production after the coup, “it seems more plausible to argue that U.S. policymakers were motivated mainly by fears of a communist takeover in Iran, and that the involvement of U.S. companies was sought mainly to prevent this from occurring. The Cold War was at its height in the early 1950s, and the Soviet Union was viewed as an expansionist power seeking world domination. Eisenhower had made the Soviet threat a key issue in the 1952 elections, accusing the Democrats of being soft on communism and of having ‘lost China.’ Once in power, the new administration quickly sought to put its views into practice.”[49]

A 2019 study by Gasiorowski concluded “that U.S. policymakers did not have compelling evidence that the threat of a Communist takeover was increasing substantially in the months before the coup. Rather, the Eisenhower administration interpreted the available evidence in a more alarming manner than the Truman administration had.”[112]

Gasiorowski further states “the major U.S. oil companies were not interested in Iran at this time. A glut existed in the world oil market. The U.S. majors had increased their production in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1951 in order to make up for the loss of Iranian production; operating in Iran would force them to cut back production in these countries which would create tensions with Saudi and Kuwaiti leaders. Furthermore, if nationalist sentiments remained high in Iran, production there would be risky. U.S. oil companies had shown no interest in Iran in 1951 and 1952. By late 1952, the Truman administration had come to believe that participation by U.S. companies in the production of Iranian oil was essential to maintain stability in Iran and keep Iran out of Soviet hands. In order to gain the participation of the major U.S. oil companies, Truman offered to scale back a large anti-trust case then being brought against them. The Eisenhower administration shared Truman’s views on the participation of U.S. companies in Iran and also agreed to scale back the anti-trust case. Thus, not only did U.S. majors not want to participate in Iran at this time, it took a major effort by U.S. policymakers to persuade them to become involved.”[49]

In 2004, Gasiorowski edited a book on the coup[113] arguing that “the climate of intense cold war rivalry between the superpowers, together with Iran’s strategic vital location between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf oil fields, led U.S. officials to believe that they had to take whatever steps were necessary to prevent Iran from falling into Soviet hands.”[113] While “these concerns seem vastly overblown today”[113] the pattern of “the 1945–46 Azerbaijan crisis, the consolidation of Soviet control in Eastern Europe, the communist triumph in China, and the Korean War—and with the Red Scare at its height in the United States”[113] would not allow U.S. officials to risk allowing the Tudeh Party to gain power in Iran.[113] Furthermore, “U.S. officials believed that resolving the oil dispute was essential for restoring stability in Iran, and after March 1953 it appeared that the dispute could be resolved only at the expense either of Britain or of Mosaddeq.”[113] He concludes “it was geostrategic considerations, rather than a desire to destroy Mosaddeq’s movement, to establish a dictatorship in Iran or to gain control over Iran’s oil, that persuaded U.S. officials to undertake the coup.”[113] Faced with choosing between British interests and Iran, the U.S. chose Britain, Gasiorowski said. “Britain was the closest ally of the United States, and the two countries were working as partners on a wide range of vitally important matters throughout the world at this time. Preserving this close relationship was more important to U.S. officials than saving Mosaddeq’s tottering regime.” A year earlier, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill used Britain’s support for the U.S. in the Cold War to insist the United States not undermine his campaign to isolate Mosaddegh. “Britain was supporting the Americans in Korea, he reminded Truman, and had a right to expect ‘Anglo-American unity’ on Iran.”[19]: 145

According to Kinzer, for most Americans, the crisis in Iran became just part of the conflict between Communism and “the Free world”.[19]: 84  “A great sense of fear, particularly the fear of encirclement, shaped American consciousness during this period. … Soviet power had already subdued Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Communist governments were imposed on Bulgaria and Romania in 1946, Hungary and Poland in 1947, and Czechoslovakia in 1948. Albania and Yugoslavia also turned to communism. Greek communists made a violent bid for power. Soviet soldiers blocked land routes to Berlin for sixteen months. In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear weapon. That same year, pro-Western forces in China lost their Civil War to communists led by Mao Zedong. From Washington, it seemed that enemies were on the march everywhere.”[19]: 84  Consequently, “the United States, challenged by what most Americans saw as a relentless communist advance, slowly ceased to view Iran as a country with a unique history that faced a unique political challenge.”[19]: 205  Some historians, including Douglas Little,[114] Abbas Milani[115] and George Lenczowski[116] have echoed the view that fears of a communist takeover or Soviet influence motivated the U.S. to intervene.

On 11 May 1951, prior to the overthrow of Mosaddegh, Adolf A. Berle warned the U.S. State Department that U.S. “control of the Middle East was at stake, which, with its Persian Gulf oil, meant ‘substantial control of the world.'”[117]
News coverage in the United States and the United Kingdom

When Mosaddegh called for the dissolution of the Majlis in August 1953, the editors of the New York Times gave the opinion that: “A plebiscite more fantastic and farcical than any ever held under Hitler or Stalin is now being staged in Iran by Premier Mosaddegh in an effort to make himself unchallenged dictator of the country.”[118]

A year after the coup, the New York Times wrote on 6 August 1954, that a new oil “agreement between Iran and a consortium of foreign oil companies” was “good news indeed”:[119]

Costly as the dispute over Iranian oil has been to all concerned, the affair may yet be proved worthwhile if lessons are learned from it: Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran’s experience will prevent the rise of Mosaddeghs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and more far-seeing leaders. In some circles in Great Britain the charge will be pushed that American “imperialism”—in the shape of the American oil firms in the consortium!—has once again elbowed Britain from a historic stronghold.[119]

The documentary Cinematograph aired on 18 August 2011 on the anniversary of the coup. In it, BBC admitted for the first time to the role of BBC Persian radio as the propaganda arm of the British government in Iran. The Cinematograph narrator said:

The British government used the BBC Persian radio for advancing its propaganda against Mosaddegh and anti-Mosaddegh material were repeatedly aired on the radio channel to the extent that Iranian staff at the BBC Persian radio went on strike to protest the move.[120]

The documentary quoted a 21 July 1951 classified document in which a Foreign Office official thanked the British ambassador for his proposals that were precisely followed by the BBC Persian radio to strengthen its propaganda against Mosaddegh:[citation needed]

The BBC had already made most of the points which you listed, but they were very glad to have an indication from you of what was likely to be most effective and will arrange their programme accordingly… We should also avoid direct attacks on the ‘ruling classes’ since it seems probable that we may want to deal with a government drawn from those classes should Mosaddegh fall.

The BBC was at times even used directly in the operations, sending coded messages to the coup plotters by changing the wording of its broadcasts.[121]

An early account of the CIA’s role in the coup appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in late 1954, purporting to explain how “the strategic little nation of Iran was rescued from the closing clutch of Moscow.” The report was approved by the CIA, and its authors may have been assisted by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., who had written for the Post before.[122]
Britain’s role

The National Security Archive released two declassified documents in August 2017 which confirm the British solicitation of the United States’ assistance in ousting Mosaddegh.[20][123] According to these records, the British first approached the American government about a plan for the coup in November 1952[124] “repeatedly” asking U.S. to join the coup,[125] claiming that the Mosaddegh government would be ineffective in preventing a communist takeover,[124] and that Mosaddegh was a threat to America’s global fight against communism,[126] which they believed necessitated action; the records also state that UK and U.S. spy agencies had by then had “very tentative and preliminary discussions regarding the practicability of such a move”.[21] At the time, the American government was already preparing to aid Mosaddegh in his oil dealings with the British, and believed him to be anti-communist—considerations which made the U.S. government skeptical of the plot. Since President Truman’s term was drawing to a close in January 1953, and there was too much uncertainty and danger associated with the plot, the U.S. government decided not to take action against Mosaddegh.[124]

According to the 1952 documents, it was Christopher Steel, the No 2 official in the British embassy in Washington, who “pitched” the idea of the coup to US officials amid the US-Britain talks which had begun in October. The document also says that the British officials rejected Paul Nitze’s suggestion that, instead of executing a coup, they mount a “campaign” against Ayatollah Abolqasem Kashani, “a leading opponent of British involvement in Iran’s oil industry”, and the communist Tudeh Party. They “pressed the US for a decision” since they knew “the Truman administration was in its final weeks”.[125] According to Wilber, the British Secret Intelligence Service launched a propaganda campaign via “the press, handbills and the Tehran clergy” to “weaken the Mossadeq government in any way possible”.[127]

More broadly, the oil nationalization law led to a direct conflict of interests between Mosaddegh and the British government, and the latter proposed to regain its control over the oil industry in Iran by following a “three-track strategy” aimed at either “pressuring him into a favorable settlement or by removing him from the office.” The three components of Britain’s strategy consisted of (1) refusing direct negotiation with Mosaddegh, (2) imposing economic sanctions on Iran and performing war games in the region, and (3) the removal of Mosaddegh through “covert political action”.[49]

In the lead-up to the 70th anniversary of the coup in August 2023, David Owen, who was the UK Foreign Secretary in the late 1970s, said that MI6 should follow the example of the CIA and acknowledge its role in the coup.[128]
Clergy’s role

Mosaddegh appointed a series of secular ministers to his cabinet during his premiership, losing his support with the clergy.[129] In 1953, Ayatollah Abol-Qasem Kashani and his followers organised a series of protests against Mosaddegh’s liberal reforms. By July 1953 when Mosaddegh asked for a critical extension of his emergency powers, “… Clerical members of the Majles who supported Kashani left the National Front Coalition and set up their own Islamic Faction…”.[130] (Muslim Warriors). This faction then boycotted the 1953 referendum about the dissolution of parliament.[131]

At 8am on 18 August Ayatollah Behbahan mobilised 3000 stick and club wielding anti-shah protestors formed a mob in Tehran. This was done in the hope that the removal of Mosaddegh would create a more religious government.[132] Separate mobilisation was instigated by Ayatollah Kashani in the country at this time. There has been documentation that both Ayatollah Behbahani and Kashani received funds from the CIA by some sources.[133] The former’s mob would lead Mosaddegh to abandon his residence, and ultimately his capture. Iranian Historian Michael Axworthy stated that “… [The clergy’s] move to oppose Mossadeq was the decisive factor in his downfall…”.[134]
Aftermath

The coup has been said to have “left a profound and long-lasting legacy.”[135][136]: 122
Blowback

The coup caused long-lasting damage to the U.S. reputation, according to documents released to the National Security Archive and reflected in the book Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran:

The ’28 Mordad’ coup, as it is known by its Persian date [in the Solar Hijri calendar], was a watershed for Iran, for the Middle East and for the standing of the United States in the region. The joint US-British operation ended Iran’s drive to assert sovereign control over its own resources and helped put an end to a vibrant chapter in the history of the country’s nationalist and democratic movements. These consequences resonated with dramatic effect in later years. When the Shah finally fell in 1979, memories of the US intervention in 1953, which made possible the monarch’s subsequent, and increasingly unpopular, 25-year reign intensified the anti-American character of the revolution in the minds of many Iranians.[137]

The authoritarian monarch appreciated the coup, Kermit Roosevelt wrote in his account of the affair. “‘I owe my throne to God, my people, my army and to you!’ By ‘you’ he [the shah] meant me and the two countries—Great Britain and the United States—I was representing. We were all heroes.”[87]

On 16 June 2000, The New York Times published the secret CIA report, “Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952 – August 1953”, partly explaining the coup from CIA agent Wilber’s perspective.[citation needed] In a related story, The New York Times reporter James Risen penned a story revealing that Wilber’s report, hidden for nearly five decades, had recently come to light.[138]

In the summer of 2001, Ervand Abrahamian writes in the journal Science & Society that Wilber’s version of the coup was missing key information some of which was available elsewhere:

The New York Times recently leaked a CIA report on the 1953 American-British overthrow of Mosaddeq, Iran’s Prime Minister. It billed the report as a secret history of the secret coup, and treated it as an invaluable substitute for the U.S. files that remain inaccessible. But a reconstruction of the coup from other sources, especially from the archives of the British Foreign Office, indicates that this report is highly sanitized. It glosses over such sensitive issues as the crucial participation of the U.S. ambassador in the actual overthrow; the role of U.S. military advisers; the harnessing of local Nazis and Muslim terrorists; and the use of assassinations to destabilize the government. What is more, it places the coup in the context of the Cold War rather than that of the Anglo-Iranian oil crisis—a classic case of nationalism clashing with imperialism in the Third World.[106]

In a review of Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, historian Michael Beschloss wrote, “Mr. Weiner argues that a bad C.I.A. track record has encouraged many of our gravest contemporary problems… A generation of Iranians grew up knowing that the C.I.A. had installed the shah”, Mr. Weiner notes. “In time, the chaos that the agency had created in the streets of Tehran would return to haunt the United States.”[139]

The administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower considered the coup a success, but, given its blowback, that opinion is no longer generally held, because of its “haunting and terrible legacy”.[19]: 215  In 2000, Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State, said that intervention by the U.S. in the internal affairs of Iran was a setback for democratic government.[140][141] The coup is widely believed to have significantly contributed to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which deposed the “pro-Western” Shah and replaced the monarchy with an “anti-Western” Islamic republic.[142]

According to U.S. President Obama. “For many Iranians, the coup demonstrated duplicity by the United States, which presented itself as a defender of freedom but did not hesitate to use underhanded methods to overthrow a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests”, the Agence France-Presse reported.[143][failed verification]

United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who visited Iran both before and after the coup, wrote that “When Mosaddegh and Persia started basic reforms, we became alarmed. We united with the British to destroy him; we succeeded; and ever since, our name has not been an honored one in the Middle East.”[144]
Iran
Perceptions of the Shah

When the Shah returned to Iran after the coup, he was greeted by a cheering crowd. He wrote in his memoirs that while he had been a king for over a decade, for the first time he felt that the people had “elected” and “approved” of him, and that he had a “legitimate” popular mandate to carry out his reforms (although some in the crowd may have been bribed).[citation needed] The Shah was never able to remove the reputation of being a “foreign imposed” ruler among non-royalist Iranians. The Shah throughout his rule continued to assume that he was supported by virtually everybody in Iran, and sank into deep dejection when in 1978 massive mobs demanded his ouster.
Bloody suppression of the opposition

An immediate consequence of the coup d’état was the Shah’s suppression of all republicanist[16][page needed] political dissent, especially the liberal and nationalist opposition umbrella group National Front as well as the communist Tudeh Party, and concentration of political power in the Shah and his courtiers.[136]

The minister of Foreign Affairs and the closest associate of Mosaddegh, Hossein Fatemi, was executed by order of the Shah’s military court by firing squad on 10 November 1954.[145] According to Kinzer, “The triumphant Shah [Pahlavi] ordered the execution of several dozen military officers and student leaders who had been closely associated with Mohammad Mosaddegh”.[146]

As part of the post-coup d’état political repression between 1953 and 1958, the Shah outlawed the National Front, and arrested most of its leaders.[147] The Shah personally spared Mosaddegh the death penalty, and he was given 3 years in prison, followed by house arrest for life.[16][page needed]
Mohammad Mosaddegh in court, 8 November 1953

Many supporters of Iran continued to fight against the new regime, yet they were suppressed with some even being killed. The political party that Mosaddegh founded, the National Front of Iran, was later reorganized by Karim Sanjabi, and was later led by the National Poet of Iran Adib Boroumand, who was a strong Mosaddegh supporter and helped spread pro-Mosaddegh propaganda during the Abadan Crisis and its aftermath.[148]

The Communist Tudeh bore the main brunt of the crackdown.[136]: 84  The Shah’s security forces arrested 4,121 Tudeh political activists including 386 civil servants, 201 college students, 165 teachers, 125 skilled workers, 80 textile workers, and 60 cobblers.[136]: 89, 90  Forty were executed (primarily for murder, such as Khosrow Roozbeh),[15][page needed][16][page needed] another 14 died under torture and over 200 were sentenced to life imprisonment.[147] The Shah’s post-coup dragnet also captured 477 Tudeh members (“22 colonels, 69 majors, 100 captains, 193 lieutenants, 19 noncommissioned officers, and 63 military cadets”)[citation needed] who were in the Iranian armed forces.[136]: 92  After their presence was revealed, some National Front supporters complained that this Communist Tudeh military network could have saved Mosaddegh. However, few Tudeh officers commanded powerful field units, especially tank divisions that might have countered the coup. Most of the captured Tudeh officers came from the military academies, police and medical corps.[136]: 92 [26]: 92  At least eleven of the captured army officers were tortured to death between 1953 and 1958.[136]: 89, 90
Creation of a secret police
Hossein Fatemi after arrest

After the 1953 coup, the Shah’s government formed the SAVAK (secret police), many of whose agents were trained in the United States. The SAVAK monitored dissidents and carried out censorship. After the 1971 Siahkal Incident, it was given a “loose leash” to torture suspected dissidents with “brute force” that, over the years, “increased dramatically”, and nearly 100 people were executed for political reasons during the last 20 years of the Shah’s rule.[136]: 88, 105  After the revolution, SAVAK was officially abolished, but was in reality “drastically expanded” into a new organization that killed over 8,000–12,000 prisoners between 1981 and 1985 alone, and 20,000–30,000 in total, with one prisoner who served time under both the Shah and the Islamic Republic declaring that “four months under (Islamic Republic’s) warden Asadollah Lajevardi took the toll of four years under SAVAK”.[136][149][150]
Oil policy

Another effect was sharp improvement of Iran’s economy; the British-led oil embargo against Iran ended, and oil revenue increased significantly beyond the pre-nationalisation level. Despite Iran not controlling its national oil, the Shah agreed to replacing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with a consortium—British Petroleum and eight European and American oil companies; in result, oil revenues increased from $34 million in 1954–1955 to $181 million in 1956–1957, and continued increasing,[26]: 419, 420  and the United States sent development aid and advisers. The Shah’s government attempted to solve the issue of oil nationalization through this method, and Iran began to develop rapidly under his rule. The Shah later in his memoirs declared that Mosaddegh was a “dictator” who was “damaging” Iran through his “stubbornness”, while he (the Shah) “followed” the smarter option.[16][page needed] By the 1970s, Iran was wealthier than all of its surrounding neighbors, and economists frequently predicted that it would become a major global economic power, and a developed country.[16][page needed]

When the Shah attempted during the 1970s to once again control the oil prices (through OPEC), and cancel the same oil consortium agreement that caused the 1953 coup, it resulted in a massive decline in US support for the Shah, and ironically, hastened his downfall.[151]

CIA staff historian David Robarge stated: “The CIA carried out [a] successful regime change operation. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences.” The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a most impactful unintended consequence.[152]
Internationally

Kinzer wrote that the 1953 coup d’état was the first time the United States used the CIA to overthrow a “democratically elected”, “civil government”.[19][page needed] The Eisenhower administration viewed Operation Ajax as a success, with “immediate and far-reaching effect. Overnight, the CIA became a central part of the American foreign policy apparatus, and covert action came to be regarded as a cheap and effective way to shape the course of world events”—a coup engineered by the CIA called Operation PBSuccess toppling the duly elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, which had nationalised farm land owned by the United Fruit Company, followed the next year.[19]: 209

A pro-American government in Iran extended the United States’ geographic and strategic advantage in the Middle East, as Turkey, also bordering the USSR, was part of NATO.[153]

In 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, acknowledged the coup’s pivotal role in the troubled relationship and “came closer to apologizing than any American official ever has before”:

The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. … But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.[154][155][156]

In June 2009, the U.S. President Barack Obama in a speech in Cairo, Egypt, talked about the United States’ relationship with Iran, mentioning the role of the U.S. in 1953 Iranian coup saying:

This issue has been a source of tension between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I have made it clear to Iran’s leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward.[157]

Legacy

In the Islamic Republic, remembrance of the coup is quite different from that of history books published in the West, and follows the precepts of Ayatollah Khomeini that Islamic jurists must guide the country to prevent “the influence of foreign powers”.[158] Kashani came out against Mosaddegh by mid-1953 and “told a foreign correspondent that Mosaddegh had fallen because he had forgotten that the shah enjoyed extensive popular support.”[159] A month later, Kashani “went even further and declared that Mosaddegh deserved to be executed because he had committed the ultimate offense: rebelling against the shah, ‘betraying’ the country, and repeatedly violating the sacred law.”[160]

Men associated with Mosaddegh and his ideals dominated Iran’s first post-revolutionary government. The first prime minister after the Iranian revolution was Mehdi Bazargan, a close associate of Mosaddegh. But with the subsequent rift between the conservative Islamic establishment and the secular liberal forces, Mosaddegh’s work and legacy has been largely ignored by the Islamic Republic establishment.[19]: 258  However, Mosaddegh remains a popular historical figure among Iranian opposition factions. Mosaddegh’s image is one of the symbols of Iran’s opposition movement, also known as the Green Movement.[161] Kinzer writes that Mosaddegh “for most Iranians” is “the most vivid symbol of Iran’s long struggle for democracy” and that modern protesters carrying a picture of Mosaddegh is the equivalent of saying “We want democracy” and “No foreign intervention”.[161]
External videos
video icon Presentation by Kinzer on All the Shah’s Men, 8 October 2003, C-SPAN

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kinzer’s book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror has been censored of descriptions of Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani’s activities during the Anglo-American coup d’état. Mahmoud Kashani, the son of Abol-Ghasem Kashani, “one of the top members of the current, ruling élite”[162] whom the Iranian Council of Guardians has twice approved to run for the presidency, denies there was a coup d’état in 1953, saying Mosaddegh was obeying British plans to undermine the role of Shia clerics.[162]

This allegation also is posited in the book Khaterat-e Arteshbod-e Baznesheshteh Hossein Fardoust (The Memoirs of Retired General Hossein Fardoust), published in the Islamic Republic and allegedly written by Hossein Fardoust, a former SAVAK officer. It says that rather than being a mortal enemy of the British, Mohammad Mosaddegh always favored them, and his nationalisation campaign of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was inspired by “the British themselves”. Scholar Ervand Abrahamian suggests that the fact that Fardoust’s death was announced before publication of the book may be significant, as the Islamic Republic authorities may have forced him into writing such statements under duress.[136]: 160, 161

Jeanine Pirro LOSES IT in unhinged MELTDOWN – Jeanine Pirro freaks out at reporter amid court loss

Conspiracy theories nut and Trump sycophant Judge Jeanine Pirro who Trump appointed as D.C. prosecutor keeps LOSING in court

 

Jeanine Pirro’s ‘public temper tantrum’ stuns CNN legal expert

 

 

 

Fox News took Jeanine Pirro off air because “she’s crazy” and “nuts.”

 

Trump LOSES! 47’s midterm ‘Hail Mary’ flames out as Judge rejects bid to ‘harass’ Fed Chair

In a huge blow to Trump’s DOJ, Federal Judge James Boasberg quashed the grand jury subpoenas in the DOJ’s probe into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

 

‘Retribution’: Democracy Forward CEO accuses Trump as judge blocks DOJ subpoenas targeting Fed Chair

A federal judge blocks Trump’s DOJ from targeting Fed Chair Jerome Powell, dealing a major blow to the investigation.

 

Jeanine Pirro Fails To Indict Sandwich Thrower

 

Grand jury laughs off felony for ‘Sandwich Guy’ after ‘unhinged’ Trump admin response

 

Grand Jury Sides With Sandwich Slinger, Humiliating Bondi, Pirro, + DOJ

 

Jeanine Pirro Goes Nuts After Judge Says She’s Causing A Constitutional Crisis

The same judge that has routinely ruled against Jeanine Pirro’s DC office multiple times in the past few weeks had another Pirro case in front of him this past week, and he absolutely let Pirro and her office have it. The judge accused Pirro of creating a “constitutional crisis” and said that they should have withdrawn that particular case out of “sheer embarrassment” after an unusually high number of “misfires” from their office. This sent Pirro over the edge, and she immediately got on social media to create vicious lies about the judge.

 

DC Grand Juries Tell Trump’s DOJ ‘NO, We Will Not Indict Protestors On Felony Charges

It is a rare occurrence when a grand jury refuses to indict a case that a prosecutor urges them to indict. Yet Donald Trump’s US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, had grand juries tell her N0, they would NOT indict two protestors for assaulting police officers. In fact, those grand juries told here no FOUR TIMES!

One of the protestors threw a sandwich at an officer and another reportedly stepped between and scuffled with officers who were trying to detain someone due to the person’s immigration status.

The grand jury sits as the conscious of the community and evaluates the evidence presented by the prosecutors to determine if there is enough evidence to indict someone on a felony charge. But the grand jury also is a check on prosecutorial overreach, abuse, and misconduct.

 

Trump Appoints conspiracy theories nut and Trump sycophant Judge Jeanine Pirro as D.C. prosecutor

 

Trump Nominates “Reckless Maniac” for District Attorney in DC

 

DOJ vet on Trump picking Jeanine Pirro as D.C. prosecutor

 

Jeanine Pirro’s Fox producer thought she was “nuts.” Trump just named her DC’s top prosecutor.

Her lowlights during his first term included calling for a “cleansing” of the FBI and the Justice Department, which she said were full “of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in handcuffs”; describing Trump as “a nonstop, never-give-up, no-holds-barred human version of

Per the article above: Fox News host Jeanine Pirro is so unhinged that the network took her show off the air following the 2020 election out of (subsequently confirmed) fear that she’d use it to launder deranged conspiracy theories about the results. But she’s a fanatical supporter of President Donald Trump, and that is apparently enough to get her tapped as the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C.

Trump announced Thursday night that he was appointing Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, specifically praising her Fox News career. Earlier in the day, Trump indicated that he planned to move on from acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, another right-wing media figure, who appeared unable to muster sufficient votes for Senate confirmation. Pirro is the 23rd person with Fox on their resume whom Trump has selected to join his second administration.

While Martin’s legal support for January 6 defendants reportedly played a major role in the failure of his nomination, Pirro has no recent legal experience to speak of. She was elected as a Westchester County Court judge in New York in 1990, and then she served as the county’s district attorney before suffering through an aborted run for U.S. Senate in 2005. Pirro joined Fox in 2006 and has been firmly ensconced on its sets for the last two decades, serving as a legal analyst, host of the weekend evening program Justice with Judge Jeanine, and then co-host of the weekday panel show The Five.

Following Trump’s rise to the presidency, Pirro stood out among the network’s stable of shills and propagandists for providing what my late colleague Simon Maloy deemed “advocacy for the president [that] is so aggressive that it often borders on insane.”

 

The toxic Trump adulation of Jeanine Pirro

 

It’s no wonder why Trump is appointing lunatics like Fox News host Jeanine Pirro… because Trump himself is NUTS

 

KRISTI NOEM FIRED BY TRUMP

 

Moment at Kristi Noem’s Senate Hearing That Likely Got Her Fired as Secretary of Homeland Security

 

Rep. Moskowitz blasts Kristi Noem: ‘Will go down as the worst DHS Secretary’

 

‘Good riddance,’ Hakeem Jeffries says after Trump fires Kristi Noem

The top Democrat in the U.S House applauded the firing of DHS chief Kristi Noem, while also demanding the Trump administration make policy changes in how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operates.

 

 

Trump FIRES KRISTI NOEM WITHOUT TELLING HER

Christian Religious Fanatics believe the Iran war is part of God’s plan and Trump was anointed by God to cause Armageddon & Jesus return

Several U.S. military commanders told their troops about wild religious conspiracies as justification for Trump’s current illegal war against Iran. Jonathan Laresen reports, “A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” Also, according to Larsen, a commander told his NCOs, “to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and return of Jesus Christ.”

 

Trump and Israel War with Iran 3 bible Prophecies

 

 

Trump Is Pure Evil and May be The AntiChrist

 

Per a post at gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/263-religion/74921102

“Trump has a CULT-Like following when it comes to his supporters. They DEFEND him over everything and will DIE for him. You will NOT change their minds when it comes to Trump..

Trump stated that he has never asks GOD for forgiveness because he does not believe he has ever done anything that needs forgiven.

He avoids the question if he has a relationship with God.

The Antichrist has “a mouth that speaks boastfully.. prospered in everything he did, and truth was thrown to the ground.. he will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior”.

The Bible describes the Antichrist as the Man of Lawlessness (2 Thess 2:3). “He will exalt himself over everything……He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie.” Jesus warned his disciples not to be deceived by false prophets. In Daniel 7:25, it says the antichrist will think to change times and laws. Daniel further describes him as a charismatic speaker (7:8), crafty politician (9:27), distinct physical appearance (7:20), selfish, ambitious, egomaniac (11:36), greedy materialist (11:38), controlling (7:25), proud and self-exalting (Daniel 11:36) and utterly lawless (2Thess 2:8).

 

 

Trump Is Pure Evil

Trump embodies the worst traits a human being is capable of possessing; Liar, Lawless, Vile, Evil, Vindictive, Hateful, Mean Spirited, Selfish, Lacks Empathy, Braggart, has No Humility & Never Apologizes

 

15 Bible Verses Identifying Trump as the Antichrist

Trump has gotten away with a staggering amount of lawless, outrageous conduct, has defied being held accountable for crimes any other person would have been sentenced to prison for years and against all odds, managed to get himself back in the White House. It’s as though evil forces from hell are helping him.

 

This Theologian says he has Proof that Trump the Antichrist w/ Dr. Rev. Matthew Fox

 

Why Trump’s Agenda Is Anti-Christ

 

Description from youtube: Trump Is The Antichrist! Christian Testimonies From Born-again Christians testify about the rise of Antichrist Trump in light of God’s Word.

 

4123 Satan, as deceiver – Dictionary of Bible Themes – Bible Gateway

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Satan’s character is deceitful, devious and cunning as in a variety of guises he seeks to influence people for his own ends.

Satan’s deceitful character

He is evil Mt 6:13 See also Mt 5:37; Mt 13:19; Jn 17:15; 2Th 3:3; 1Jn 2:13-14; 1Jn 3:8,12; 1Jn 5:18

He is a liar Jn 8:44 See also Ge 3:4-5; Job 1:11; Job 2:5; Rev 3:9

He is devious 2Co 11:14 See also 2Co 11:3; Eph 6:11; 2Th 2:9; 1Ti 3:7; 2Ti 2:26

He is scheming Eph 6:11 See also 2Co 2:10-11

He is a slanderer Job 1:9-11 See also 1Ti 5:14-15; Rev 2:9

Satan’s deceitful work

He deceives individuals 1Ti 2:14 Eve was deceived by Satan the serpent. See also Da 8:25; 2Ti 3:13; Rev 12:9; Rev 20:3,10

He appoints false prophets Mt 7:15 See also Dt 13:5; Jer 23:26; Jer 28:15; Jer 29:21; Eze 13:6-10; 2Pe 2:1-3,18-19

He misuses Scripture Mt 4:6 pp Lk 4:10

He blinds unbelievers 2Co 4:4

 

How EVIL Is THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION!?

 

Trump’s Threat; “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”

Trump PROVES he’s a LAWLESS CRIMINAL & THUG who should be ARRESTED and LOCKED UP for making threats: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” This is how MOB BOSSES behave.

 

Trump promoted a video featuring an extreme close-up photo of his face in black and white, and audio of him making an obvious threat: “If you f— around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before.”

 

Trump posts disturbing baseball bat photo with Alvin Bragg, threatens ‘death and destruction’

Former President Donald Trump has sparked outrage by sharing images of him holding a baseball bat next Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s head.

March 24, 2023: Trump threatened “death and destruction” if he’s criminally charged in New York — writing the shocking social media warning after posting an image of himself holding a baseball bat next to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s head. Trump shared the image of himself holding a baseball bat — with Bragg’s hands up — on his Truth Social platform Thursday as he devoted his day to attacking the prosecutor for pursuing a case over a “hush money” payout to porn star Stormy Daniels.

More PROOF that Trump IS the Most Lawless, Corrupt & Dangerous President in History

 

 

 

Does Trump look EVIL in this photo during the 2016 debate or what?!

 

 

 

 

Trump proves once again what a lying, delusional idiot he is by claiming he won Minnesota in the 2024 Presidential Election

Democrats & the Mainstream News Media are naive in their belief in Free and Fair Elections when evidence shows Republicans have been rigging elections for years.

The above video “Republicans should be really worried” shows how oblivious the media is to how elections in the United States are rigged by Republicans

 

Republicans have a history of voter suppression, voter purges, voter challenges, Gerrymandering and other unscrupulous anti-democratic tactics to ‘win’ elections.

 

To Republicans, winning at all costs is a “Zero Sum Game”. They know the only way they can win, is to cheat and play dirty

 

Dr Beth Clarkson, a ASQ-Certified Quality Engineer with a PhD in Statistics, stated she found patterns indicative of manipulation in voting machines which goes across multiple states and election cycles.

“This is not just an anomaly that occurred in one place,” Clarkson said. “It is a pattern that has occurred repeatedly in elections across the United States. The pattern could be voter fraud or a demographic trend that has not been picked up by extensive polling, she said.

“I do not know why this trend is there, but I know that the pattern is there and one way to establish that it is or is not election fraud is to go and do a physical audit of paper records of voting machines,” she said.

Clarkson became more interested in the issue after reading a paper written by statisticians Francois Choquette and James Johnson in 2012 of the Republican primary results showing strong statistical evidence of election manipulation in Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Clarkson said she couldn’t believe their findings, so she checked their math and found it was correct and checked their model selection and found it appropriate. And then she pulled additional data from other elections they hadn’t analyzes and found the same pattern”. [source: cjonline.com/story/news/politics/state/2015/04/01/wichita-state-mathematician-sues-kris-kobach-sedgwick-county-elections-commisioner/16633765007]

 

In the above video, computer programmer (Clint Curtis) testified to a congressional committee that in October of 2000, he wrote a program for a prominent Florida Republican (Tom Feeney, who was Speaker of the House, per testimony in the above video) which could flip votes and be undetectable. In September 2006, Feeney was named one of the “20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress”.

This shows Republicans history of efforts to rig / flip elections so it would be undetectable.   Also, many voting machines and software is made by Republican owners.

 

Full testimony of veteran computer programmer Clint Curtis, at a U.S. Congressional Hearing about being contacted by a Florida Republican to rig elections

 

Per the above article: NSA Analyst Proves GOP Is Stealing Elections

Analysis of recent election data has revealed a worrying pattern of potential fraud. In states where the margin of victory is less than 10%, the same mathematical formula has been found to consistently result in votes being flipped from Democrat to Republican. This has been the case in federal, senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial elections since 2008, and in the 2012 primary contests from other Republicans to Mitt Romney.

The five major voting machine companies have all been found to have close financial ties to the GOP, raising questions of conflict of interest. Tagg Romney, son of the former presidential candidate, has denied any such conflict, despite his investment in Hart Intercivic and Diebold.

A retired NSA analyst has applied a simple formula to election results in Arizona, and found evidence of systemic and coordinated election fraud on a large scale. However, this appears to be limited to larger precincts, as anomalies in smaller precincts are more easily detected.

“Easy to Cheat”

Michael Duniho, a retired NSA analyst, has spent the past seven years investigating voting anomalies in his home state of Arizona and Pima County. His research has focused on a 2006 RTA Bond issue election, which has been subject to much discussion in the media. According to Duniho, “It is really easy to cheat using computers to count votes, since you can’t see what is going on in the machine.”

Duniho applied a mathematical model to the voting results from the largest precincts in Arizona and found that the Republican candidate in every election since 2008 had gained 8-10% in the polls, while the Democratic candidate had lost 8-10%. This swing of up to 20 points could be enough to swing an election, unless the candidate was already losing badly.

Duniho, with decades of experience in deciphering large amounts of data for the NSA, was determined to understand why this pattern was only occurring in the largest precincts.

Nose Counting

Francois Choquette and James Johnson have uncovered an intriguing phenomenon in the February Republican primary contest in South Carolina. An unusually large number of votes were cast for Mitt Romney in larger precincts, while Paul and Santorum votes trended downward. This prompted Choquette to examine the results in all 50 states, where he found a 10% switch in votes from Democrat to GOP in all states except Utah. Further investigation revealed that Romney had used the same technique against John McCain in Maricopa County in 2008, although McCain’s lead was too large to be affected.

Given the sheer scale of the task, Choquette has provided a set of instructions to enable others to replicate the analysis in their own county or state. The implications of this research could be far-reaching and Choquette’s work is certainly worthy of further examination.

Stealing Votes

Analysis of voting patterns in Arizona has revealed a significant discrepancy between the size of precincts and the results of the election. According to Professor Duniho, if the percentages of votes remained consistent between precincts, the trend line would be flat. However, the reality is that the lines slope downwards for Democrats and upwards for Republicans. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the 2012 Presidential primary, where votes for Rick Santorum and Ron Paul were systematically bled off and credited to Mitt Romney. After Duniho’s spreadsheet was completed, the actual vote totals from other Arizona election contests were compared, further confirming the discrepancy.

Analysis of the 2010 elections in Arizona has revealed evidence of manipulation. From Governor Brewer to Senator McCain and Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the trends lines all indicated that a single individual had inserted a program into the system’s central computer, flipping votes. The results were astonishing: Governor Brewer had actually lost her election and Gabby Gifford’s slim victory over Tea Party Conservative Jesse Kelly was much greater than the reported 1%.

John Duniho, a political analyst, has called for strong hand count audits to confirm the integrity of the elections. This would involve comparing hand counts to the official reports. Such measures are essential to ensure the legitimacy of the electoral process.

Ohio Precedent

For years, Republicans have been accused of vote tampering in elections. In 2004, the presidential election in Ohio and Florida brought these allegations to the forefront. In Ohio, GOP consultant Michael Connell was accused of creating a computer program with a trap door that shifted Democratic votes to the Republican Party. Connell was subpoenaed as a witness in a lawsuit against then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and lawyers for the plaintiff asked the Department of Justice to provide Connell with security due to two threats made against his life by people associated with Karl Rove. Tragically, Connell was killed in a plane crash before the trial began.

In Florida, the University of California at Berkeley’s Quantitative Methods Research Team conducted a study that found anomalies between Florida counties using touch-screen voting and those using other methods that could not be explained statistically. The study showed that counties using electronic voting resulted in a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. Michael Hout, a Berkeley professor who conducted the study, said that the evidence was too strong to ignore, noting that the probability of such evidence occurring where the true difference is zero is less than once in a thousand chances.

Don’t Trust, Verify

The integrity of the upcoming US election is under scrutiny after an analysis by statistician Richard Duniho found evidence of vote-flipping. This could only be possible if computerized voting machines were programmed to steal votes. Calls to conduct hand counts of ballots by precinct to verify the results have been unsuccessful in Pima County, Arizona, where anomalies were first detected in 2006. With the election just 12 days away, it is unclear whether a judge will be willing to reverse past trends and permit access to ballots.

The implications of this are concerning. More than 100 million Americans will cast their ballots, believing their vote will be fairly counted. If the analysis is correct, criminals could be stealing up to 10% of votes without consequence. This could have a significant impact on the outcome of the election, which is much closer than in 2008 when President Obama won by a large margin. It is essential that the American democratic system is not undermined by another election crisis, raising questions over the last three national Presidential election results.

Don’t Take Our Word

As the US election results continue to pour in, the need for accuracy and transparency has never been greater. In the UK, paper ballots are used and the final outcome can take up to three days to be finalized. This is because every ballot is transparently hand-counted, providing citizens with the assurance that their votes are counted accurately.

The Justice Department’s insistence that results must be reported by 11 pm for the television networks is not only misguided, but irresponsible. It is time for Americans to demand hand ballot counts, and to reject the notion of being victimized by vote fraud. The news that Serbia, Belarus and Kazakhstan are sending election monitors to watch the US election is a stark reminder of the need for accuracy and transparency in this process. It is time for Americans to take control of their own destiny and ensure that their votes are counted accurately.

 

Republicans have been using unscrupulous, treasonous tactics to rig and steal elections for over 50 years.

 

GOP’s History of Treasonous Tactics to Win Elections

Members of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign covertly negotiated with Iranian leaders to undermine incumbent President Jimmy Carter by delaying the release of 66 American hostages detained in Iran. This deal with Iran caused the delay the release of American hostages for a year past the time they could have been released, to help Reagan win the 1980 election. This became known as the 1980 “October Surprise”.  The hostage situation, which began when Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, was one of the biggest news stories of 1980, and Carter’s inability to resolve it is widely believed to have contributed to his loss. We now know the reason President Carter was unable to negotiate the release of the hostages was due to Reagan’s presidential campaign covertly negotiating with Iranian leaders, promising not to release them until after Reagan was elected.

By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign. In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris – concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. To sabotage these efforts, Nixon set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser, who convinced the South Vietnamese pull out of peace talks, with promises of them getting a better deal if Nixon was elected President. This helped Nixon get elected, resulting in the war dragging on years afterwards, causing the unnecessary deaths of thousands of U.S. Troops and the deaths of South Vietnamese.

 

Nixon Prolonged the Vietnam War to get elected President, which cost thousand of lives

 

 

Nixon ran on a platform that opposed the Vietnam war, but to win the election, he needed the war to continue

In 1968, the Paris Peace talks, intended to put an end to the 13-year-long Vietnam War, failed because an aide working for then-Presidential candidate Richard Nixon convinced the South Vietnamese to walk away from the dealings, says a new report by the BBC’s David Taylor. By the late 1960s Americans had been involved in the Vietnam War for nearly a decade, and the ongoing conflict was an incredibly contentious issue, says PBS:

In 1967, with American troop strength in Vietnam reaching 500,000, protest against U.S. participation in the Vietnam War had grown stronger as growing numbers of Americans questioned whether the U.S. war effort could succeed or was morally justifiable. They took their protests to the streets in peace marches, demonstrations, and acts of civil disobedience. Despite the country’s polarization, the balance of American public opinion was beginning to sway toward “de-escalation” of the war.

Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris – concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

President Johnson had at the time a habit of recording all of his phone conversations, and newly released tapes from 1968 detailed that the FBI had “bugged” the telephones of the South Vietnamese ambassador and of Anna Chennault, one of Nixon’s aides. Nixon records show that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he used Anna Chennault as his liaison in Vietnam, to persuade them to refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson. This was done to hurt Democratic Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey and help Nixon.

In the recently released tapes, we can hear Johnson being told about Nixon’s interference by Defence Secretary Clark Clifford. The FBI had bugged the South Vietnamese ambassadors phone. They had Chennault lobbying the ambassador on tape. Johnson was justifiably furious — he ordered Nixon’s campaign be placed under FBI surveillance. Johnson passed along a note to Nixon that he knew about the move. Nixon played like he had no idea why the South backed out, and offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.

Though the basic story of Nixon’s involvement in stalling the Vietnam peace talks has been around before, the new tapes, says the Atlantic Wire, describe how President Johnson knew all about the on-goings but chose not to bring them to the public’s attention: he thought that his intended successor, Hubert Humphrey, was going to beat Nixon in the upcoming election anyway. And, by revealing that he knew about Nixon’s dealings, he’d also have to admit to having spied on the South Vietnamese ambassador.

Johnson was livid. He even called the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen to complain that “they oughtn’t be doing this. This is treason.” “I know,” was Dirksen’s feeble reply.

Eventually, Nixon won by just 1 percent of the popular vote. “Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968,” says the BBC.

This treason cost many lives. To Nixon, getting elected was more important than the lives of our Troops or Vietnamese people. Lack of empathy and decency seems to be a common trait of Right Wingers, such as Nixon, Reagan and Trump.

 

 

RedShift: How The GOP Rigged Our Elections

Voter Suppression has been a Republican tactic for the last 50 years. Author Thom Hartman reveals one particular effect of their voter suppression, Redshift

 

REPUBLICAN RIGGING ELECTIONS BY GERRYMANDERING

Republicans have been Rigging Elections by Gerrymandering for years

Through Gerrymandering, Republicans has made it almost impossible to be removed from office in some districts. Since they feel safe from being removed from office, they have no motivation to compromise. They are pursuing radical right wing agendas such as cutting assistance to the poor, cutting planned parenthood funding and passing anti-aborting “War on Women” legislation when the majority of Americans do not support these policies.

 

Republicans War on Democracy began in 2010 when they began hyper-gerrymandering every state they took control of. Republicans injected $30 million, much of it from dark money, often targeting vulnerable blue state Democrats in races that wouldn’t otherwise draw a lot of national funding.  The plan was called REDMAP

 

When the midterm elections were done, Republicans had gained unilateral control of 11 state legislatures, upping their total to 25. Between then and the 2012 elections, GOP lawmakers in these states had largely undisputed power over redrawing congressional districts. This helped allow Republicans to maintain control of the House, even though Democrats received over 1 million more votes.

The Republican State Leadership Committee issued a memo stating “Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn. Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policy making at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade.”

 

Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook chronicles how our right to vote is being undercut by a decade of unscrupulous tactics by Republicans, including the partisan use of gerrymandering and voter purges, and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. The film captures real-time voter purges in North Carolina and voter intimidation in Texas.

The documentary was principally filmed during the 2016 election and exposes the nefarious playbook of voter suppression tactics being used to subvert the growing demographic tide of non-white and younger voters from fully participating in America’s democracy.

 

Gerrymandering to the Supreme Court | LET’S CONNECT THE DOTS

Every 10 years, congressional district maps are redrawn based on the new census data on the population. This process, known as redistricting, is taking place across the country right now. This episode of LET’S CONNECT draws a line from the beginnings of redistricting in this country, following different attempts by Congress and the courts to regulate the process, and connects this history to how Supreme Court decisions have and are having an effect on redistricting today.

 

GOP Gerrymandering: Democratic Votes Not Matched By Seats Gained

Rachel Maddow shows four states in which Democratic popular vote victories are not commensurate with representative legislative seats because Republican gerrymandering has tipped the playing field.

 

GOP Redistricting Is Undermining Democracy In State Legislatures

Despite stinging statewide defeats in 2018, 2020, and 2022, Republicans are still calling the shots in Wisconsin — all because of GOP redistricting, which is undermining democracy. Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, joins Mehdi to discuss.

 

Supreme Court Dominated by Republican “Justices” Hands GOP Big Victory by Gerrymandering, Ensuring Massive Election Rigging

 

REPUBLICAN DOMINATED Supreme Court Just Legalized Partisan Gerrymandering and Violating Democracy

 

Republicans are destroying democracy by Gerrymandering districts. As you can see from the graph above, a disproportionate number of Republicans were “elected” in relation to votes cast.

 

 

The Republican Dominated Supreme Court “Justices” Legalized Partisan Gerrymandering by making sure Republicans can cement their stranglehold in States they control and never be voted out of office. This is how Anti-Democratic Authoritarian Fascist take over counties (such as Hungary) and Eliminate Democracy.

 

How The GOP Manipulated Ohio Elections

After winning single-party control of the state in the 2010 elections, Ohio Republicans set out to redraw the state’s congressional map to their advantage. What unfolded is one of the most egregious examples of partisan gerrymandering in modern history. Rather than working through the official legislative process which involved a bipartisan task force, Ohio Republicans and national GOP operatives rented a secret hotel room in Columbus, known as “The Bunker.” They designed a map that would give Republicans a 12-4 advantage over Democrats, when it came to “winning” districts, and therefore, congressional seats. This unconstitutional, partisan advantage is locked in until 2022, unless stopped.

 

Why New 2021 Ohio Redistricting Maps Are An ‘Insult To Democracy’

CNN’s John Avlon breaks down how the “rigged” redistricting process in Ohio is engineered to help the Republican Party achieve an electoral majority.

 

Democrats won 20 million More Votes and Lost

The United States constitution is severely flawed when more often than not in the last few elections the majority of people voting for a particular party did not receive their relative representation. Democrats received 20 million more votes in the Senate than Republicans in 2014, yet Republicans won big.

The same occurred in the House of Representatives in 2012.

House Democrats out-earned their Republican counterparts by 1.17 million votes. Read another way, Democrats won 50.59 percent of the two-party vote. Still, they won just 46.21 percent of seats, leaving the Republicans with 234 seats and Democrats with 201.

Full article at egbertowillies.com/2015/01/04/amazing-democrats-won-20-million-votes-lost/

 

 

 

 

Politicians picking their voters is unconstitutional. Gerrymandering is an assault on Democracy.

This is yet another example of how Republicans rig elections… how they don’t give a damn about the will of the American people and how they use tactics to win, regardless of how unethical and unscrupulous the tactics may be.

UNTIL GERRYMANDERING IS MADE ILLEGAL, THERE WILL BE NO DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

 

 

Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered House map was struck down – with huge implications for 2018

It was one of the most pro-Republican gerrymanders in the country.

 

https://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/07/11/3459082/florida-court-declares-one-of-the-worst-partisan-gerrymanders-in-the-country-unconstitutional

Florida Court Declares One Of The Worst Partisan Gerrymanders In The Country Unconstitutional

 

REPUBLICANS RIGGING ELECTIONS BY VOTER PURGES

The Party Of Voter Suppression

The Republican effort to make it harder to vote continues unabated, with hundreds of thousands purged from voter rolls in two key states. Aired on 12/17/19.

 

 

2000 ELECTION RIGGED

 

The 2000 election was rigged before the first vote was cast

Jeb Bush was the Republican Governor of the State of Florida and brother of the Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush. Republican Secretary of State, Katherine Harris was also co-chair of Bush’s Florida campaign, clearly a conflict of interest in conducting a fair and impartial election. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris promised to “Deliver Florida” to George W. Bush as reported in numerous newspaper articles.

 

Secretary of State, Katherine Harris and Governor Jeb Bush had the motive and the means to make sure Florida’s decisive electoral votes were “delivered” to George W. Bush. They accomplished this by illegally purging thousands of black voters off of the Florida voter rolls, ensuring an unfair advantage to George W. Bush, as shown in the above video.

 

As shown in the “2000 Election Rigged for Bush” video, ChoicePoint / DBT was given a $4 million no-bid contract under the Jeb Bush administration which wrongly and illegally purged thousands of African Americans from the Florida voter rolls.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice “Florida registrants were purged from the rolls if 80 percent of the letters of their last names were the same as those of persons with criminal convictions. Those wrongly purged included Reverend Willie D. Whiting Jr., who, under the matching criteria, was considered the same person as Willie J. Whiting. Without specific guidelines for or limitations on the authority of election officials conducting purges, eligible voters are regularly made unnecessarily vulnerable”.

As it turned out, almost everyone on the Florida purged voters list had the right to vote.

 

Antonin Scalia and his conservative majority of 5 “justices” subverted democracy & engaged in partisan politics by stopping the 2000 election vote count. The above video explains the shocking details.

This caused George W. Bush to be installed as President. At the time the votes were stopped by the Supreme Court, there were only 154 votes separating Al Gore from George W. Bush.

With only 154 votes separating Al Gore from George W. Bush,  it’s easy to see how purging thousands of black voters being off of the Florida voter rolls rigged the 2000 election and handed it to George W. Bush on a Silver Platter.

If all of the illegally disqualified voters had been allowed to vote and all votes counted, the total votes would have decisively shown Al Gore to be the winner of the State of Florida and therefore the Presidency.

It was Jeb Bush’s illegal voter purge and Republicans who subverted Democracy by not allowing the votes to be counted that caused the installation of George W. Bush and the US to have a conservative majority in the Supreme Court.

 

Let’s not forget that Al Gore received 543,895 more votes than George W. Bush.  Al Gore was the majority of American’s choice for president so Democracy was violated and the American people got SCREWED and CHEATED.

 

 

REPUBLICANS DETERMINED TO STOP THE VOTE COUNT, OBSTRUCTED DEMOCRACY

As stated in the above article, “John Bolton was one of the pack of lawyers for the Republican presidential ticket who repeatedly sought to shut down recounts of the ballots from Florida counties before those counts revealed that Gore had actually won the state’s electoral votes and the presidency”.

“Miami-Dade County Elections Supervisor David Leahy argued at the time that 2,257 voters had apparently attempted to mark ballot cards for Gore or Bush but had not had them recorded because they had been improperly inserted into the voting machines. A hand count of those ballots revealed that 302 more of them would have gone for Gore than Bush. That shift in the numbers from just one of Florida’s 67 counties would have erased more than half of Bush’s 537-vote lead in the state”.

“But attempts to conduct a hand count were repeatedly blocked by the Bush-Cheney team, culminating with Bolton’s December 9 announcement that, “I’m here to stop the count.” A few days later, the U.S. Supreme Court would stop the count permanently, with a pro-Bush ruling in which five Republican-appointed justices, in the words of noted attorney Vincent Bugliosi, “committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of the law.”

 

2000 Election GOP House Thugs “Brooks Brothers Riot” also helped stop the Florida Recount which might have declared Al Gore the winner.

 

In this clip from the 2015 CNN documentary Bush v Gore, John “Mac” Stipanovich admits Republicans were determined to stop the vote count to make sure George W. Bush was installed as President, with no regard for Democracy or the will of the American people.

 

According to Lance deHaven-Smith, in his book entitled The Battle for Florida…

“Top Republicans used the powers of their offices to inject partisanship and instill fear down through the ranks of the state bureaucracy. In 1998 political operatives working for the Speaker of the house secretly examined voter registration records to learn the party affiliations of specific state employees and to identify agencies with high concentrations of Democrats”.

After it was determined that the most Democratic agency in the state government was the Florida Department of education, the department was restructured and the positions of many of its employees were eliminated. Florida law forbids any consideration of partisan orientations in state hiring, firing, and contracting, but it fails to contemplate the more sinister possibility that highly partisan elected officials might purge the state bureaucracy indirectly by reorganization and privatization.”

According to hermes-press.com,  “No sooner had he taken the oath of office than Jeb Bush began ferreting out and replacing Democrats throughout Florida state government, his first purge of Democratic voters.

Jeb and his cohorts let special interests know that they expected political donations of $2 for every $1 donated to Democrats or defaulters would lose access to the governor and the legislative leadership.

 

On Election Day 2000, rich white Republican voters stood in short lines and used up-to-date equipment, including electronic machines that let them correct their ballots.

African-American Voters Blocked from Reaching Polling Places by Police Roadblocks

Things were different in black districts. Some voters were flagged down at roadblocks, where highway patrol officers checked their drivers’ licenses. (Click here for more details)

Others waited in long lines for an inadequate number of booths and ancient recording equipment. All too often, innocent citizens whose names appeared on the ex-felons list were informed for the first time that they could not vote when they showed up at the polling place.

Some votes were simply trashed by ballot handlers. In Duval County, 27,000 ballots were discarded, over half of them from black precincts in Jacksonville. No official challenges were filed within the 72-hour time limit, so thousands of mostly Democratic votes were lost. Sixteen-thousand votes for Gore disappeared overnight from the ongoing Volusia County tally and were reinstated only when an election supervisor questioned the subtraction of already registered votes. No voting machine company representative or election official was able to explain what happened.

Greg Palast, an award-winning American reporter based in England, broke the story of the scrub list and documented its sleazy origins in The Observer, London, November 26, 2000. Updates, as well as each edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy have added irrefutable, hard evidence of fraud. (Palast’s most recent estimate of all qualified Florida voters barred from casting a ballot in Election 2000 stands at 90,000.)

The story was huge in Europe, but the American press ignored it completely. Massive civil rights violations that subverted an election just didn’t resonate with the mainstream press. On January 10, 2001, lawyers acting for the NAACP sued and won their case against ChoicePoint’s DBT, Secretary of State Katherine Harris (who coincidentally was enthusiastically co-chairing the Bush campaign), and Bush loyalist Clay Roberts, Director of the Division of Elections. In July 2002, to atone for its staggering error rate of 95%, DBT agreed to remove innocent voters from the now infamous list of purported ex-felons. (In 2002, the purge list hadn’t been corrected. In 2004, another suspicious list appeared. (end quote from hermes-press.com)

 

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2000 Election Investigation Recommended that the U.S. Department of Justice should “immediately initiate the litigation process against the governor” (Jeb Bush)

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted an extensive public investigation of allegations of voting irregularities during the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

“There emerges a confluence of circumstances that indicates intimidation and harassment of the Florida voters, and that was set in motion long before the November election,” said Commissioner Victoria Wilson of the US Commission on Civil Rights in their report, “Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election.” Issued June 8, 2001, the report accuses Florida election officials of “gross dereliction” and “injustice.”

To follow is some of the text from the report at http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/ch9.htm

“Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election”

“The investigation, utilizing the Commission’s subpoena power, included three days of hearings, more than 30 hours of testimony, 100 witnesses, and a systematic review of more than 118,000 pages of pertinent documents.

Responsibility Without Accountability

Florida’s governor is the state’s chief executive officer who “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Florida’s secretary of state is the chief election officer and oversees the Division of Elections. Each county has an elected supervisor of elections, except one. Together, the secretary of state and the county supervisors of elections preside over Florida’s elections.

Governor John Ellis Bush

When asked about his responsibilities to ensure the election laws of Florida were faithfully executed during the November 2000 election, Governor Bush testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that he had no real legal authority over election matters except for certifying the election and serving as a member of the state canvassing board. He indicated that he recused himself from participating on the state canvassing board because his brother was one of the presidential candidates. Governor Bush testified that “governors have the moral authority . . . to make sure that the laws, not only the state laws, but . . . also federal laws are upheld. . . .” When asked what authority and responsibility he had regarding preparation for the 2000 presidential election, Governor Bush testified that he had none and that “the secretary of state and the 67 supervisors of elections were responsible for that, and they carried out their duties.”

Under the Florida Constitution, the governor is charged with ensuring that “the laws be faithfully executed,” a responsibility Governor Bush apparently delegated to others with respect to elections. Under Florida election law, the governor is also specifically empowered to “appoint special officers to investigate alleged violations of the election laws . . .” Governor Bush testified that he had not appointed any officers to do any investigation of alleged irregularities surrounding the November 2000 election but would “if there was a reason to do so.” As of the date of this report there is no indication that the governor has exercised this authority by appointing special officers to investigate the widespread allegations of violations of the Florida election law”.

Findings:

Despite the closeness of the election, it was widespread voter disenfranchisement, not the dead-heat contest, that was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election.

Disenfranchisement of Florida voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of African Americans. Statewide, based on county-level statistical estimates, African American voters were nearly 10 times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected in the November 2000 election.

 

MISSING EMAILS

According to an article posted at American Bridge

“Bush used a personal email address as governor, and there are messages missing. As the Washington Post reporters, “Bush used his personal email address, jeb@jeb.org, to conduct official, political, and personal business…” but Bush’s email disclosure website (which was already public and available at the Florida state archives) lacks many key messages, including any messages between Jeb Bush and his brother, then-President George W. Bush.

Media accounts establish that Bush, not the State of Florida, decided which private emails to disclose – apparently nothing would have stopped the Bush team from selectively leaving out politically problematic emails. As the Tampa Bay Times reported, “The Bush files, though enormous, are not complete” because they lacked “emails the governor deemed not relevant to the public record.” In other words, Bush selected what was “relevant” or not for the public record, not civil servants.

The numbers do not add up. In 2007 Bush claimed he received 2.5 million emails on his public accounts, and 550,000 emails on his private accounts (Source, Naples Daily News, 7/12/07). Bush’s “disclosure” only contains a total of 250,000 emails. (Source, New York Times, 2/9/15)

There are media reports that Bush only recently “completed” handing over emails, despite leaving office eight years ago, potentially violating the law. A Bloomberg politics reporter Michael Bender tweeted today that “FL law requires govs to turn over emails after leaving office. Jeb didn’t finish turning over emails until last year.” He further tweeted that “Bush may not have complied with FL law until considering a presidential campaign. 119.021(4)(a).” That statute requires that “Whoever has custody of any public records shall deliver [them], at the expiration of his or her term of office…”.

News reports indicate that Jeb Bush used a private, personally owned email server. Full article at https://americanbridgepac.org/jeb-bush-hypocrisy-on-email-disclosure/

 

According to an article posted at MotherJones.com

Bush’s email archive, which includes more than 250,000 messages, has produced no piercing insights or major news stories about his gubernatorial stint. There are an immense number of emails from constituents weighing in on the issues of the day. But when it comes to the major issues of his governorship, there are—curiously—very few, if any, emails between Bush and his aides.

This email archive is not easy to search. It is comprised of 248 separate files and is hardly user-friendly. This search yielded little correspondence revealing Bush’s actions and decisions regarding pivotal events. It turns out that what’s most notable about Bush’s email trove is what’s not in it“. END QUOTE from Mother Jones. Click here to view the full article.

 

Florida Governor’s Office in Tallahassee Made 95 Telephone calls to the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign

When it became clear that the disputed Florida election could deliver the White House to his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush publicly stated that he recused himself from any official role in the recount, to avoid the “slightest appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Despite his stated hands-off policy, six of his staffers took unpaid leaves to volunteer on the recount.

Bush’s communications director in July 2001, Katie Baur, said, “While he recused himself from any involvement in what happened after Nov. 7, he did not recuse himself from his role as a brother.” What’s not known is that the level of direct involvement was, frankly, enormous.

The Los Angeles Times reported on July 14, 2001, “The Florida governor’s office in Tallahassee made 95 telephone calls to the George W. Bush presidential campaign, its advisers, lawyers and staffers during the 36-day recount period, records show. At least 10 calls came from an office number used primarily by Jeb Bush, including one call to a private line in George W. Bush’s gubernatorial office in Austin.

Another call from Jeb Bush’s number went to Karl Rove, his brother’s campaign strategist. One went to the Texas governor’s chief of staff, Clay Johnson. Another went to Michigan Gov. John Engler, who soon flew to Florida to monitor the ballot recount in Broward County. Additional calls were logged to cell phones assigned to Bush campaign staffers.

In an e-mail to The Times, Jeb Bush said he could not recall the purpose of the calls. “I have no clue what these calls were about,” he wrote.

Supporters of former Democratic nominee Al Gore have questioned whether Jeb Bush used his position to influence events behind the scenes after the election. It now appears he was more involved than he has publicly acknowledged.

The governor visited the state GOP headquarters in Tallahassee that functioned as the Bush campaign command center for the recount at least once, for example. He also dialed into at least one conference call with campaign operatives, aides said.

Full article at http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jul/14/news/mn-22362

 

 

 

2nd Worst president in history, REPUBLICAN George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which led to the illegal invasion and war against Iraq. That war was clearly illegal because Iraq did nothing to the United States and therefore George W. Bush had no legitimate reason to attack Iraq. The Iraq war caused the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi citizens and over 4,000 Americans.

 

THE RIGGED ELECTION OF GEORGE W. BUSH CAUSED THE FOLLOWING EVENTS;

Per article at (http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=1&subcatid=4&threadid=2895278&start=271&CurrentPage=10) and copies found elsewhere on the internet, here’s just a few of the crimes and misdeeds as a result of the installation of George W. Bush as President

• Installation of George W. Bush, a illegitimate president who was not elected by the American people
• Lying to the American People about Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify War Against Iraq
• Declaring and Engaging in a Illegal and unprovoked War against Iraq
• Deaths and Injuries: Causing the deaths of 4,475 Americans, 32,331 wounded Americans and the deaths of over 112,000 Iraqi Civilians
• Debt of 10 Trillion dollars due to tax cuts and unpaid for wars
• Appointment of Conservative Supreme Court Judges who destroyed the voting rights act of 1965
• The creation of ISIS due to the invasion of Iraq, be-headings and people being burned alive
• War Crimes: In the case of Hamdan vs Rumsfeld, it was proven that numerous war crimes have been committed by the Bush Administration in the war against Iraq, including the preemptive invasion itself. This does not include the unaccounted-for millions of dollars lost in Iraq or the unlawful management by the US State Department regarding the US Contractors operating in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. Holding and torturing prisoners being held without due process at Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal are also serious war crimes.
• Outing of a CIA Agent: The outing of Valerie Plame-Wilson by the Bush Administration, admitted by the CIA as being a covert agent, has led directly to Dick Cheney and possibly directly to the President.
• Spying on Americans: President Bush has admitted to his program of warrentless spying against millions of Americans in violation of the Forth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
• Missing e-mails: Two federal statutes require presidential communications, including White House e-mails, to be preserved for the nation’s historical records. From 2001 to October 2003, the White House records system over-wrote all their e-mail files, and up to 2005, some e-mails still were not fully preserved. CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) and the National Security Archives allege that millions of e-mails are missing from White House servers. (It is interesting that the timing of these lost e-mails is when most of the major illegal Bush activities were occurring.)
• Misuse of e-mail systems: Both the Republican National Committee e-mail system and the White House system were used within the White House to perform partisan political activities. As the White House is public property, it is against the law to do partisan political business while on public White House property.
• Unlawful FBI Activities: The ACLU has released documents showing that the Bush Administration directed the FBI to expand the definition of “domestic terrorism” to include citizens engaged in nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. This is totally unconstitutional.
• Firing of US Attorneys: This was a successful attempt by the President to use his US Attorney General and the US Justice Department for partisan political gains. VIDEO
• Response to Hurricane Katrina: This was a demonstration of gross negligence by the Bush Administration. A major, obvious betrayal of public trust.
• Scooter Libby: Bush Obstructed and Shorted-Circuited Justice when he commuted the prison sentence of “Scooter” Libby. This was another example of TWO JUSTICE SYSTEMS… one for the “Rich and Well-Connected” and another for everyone else.
• Koch Industries was indicted by the DoJ in 2000 for knowingly dumping “at least 91 metric tons of uncontrolled benzene in its liquid waste streams” at its Corpus Christi refinery, and for conspiring to cover it up in an attempt to deceive regulators.After George W. Bush took office in 2001, however, “his Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped 88 counts against Koch for the benzene spill and cover-up” in exchange for a guilty plea to falsifying documents and a $20 million fine (a settlement from $350 million in potential fines.)The Kochs made out pretty well in exchange for their $32,200 contribution to the 2000 Bush campaign.  [Source: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8778]
• And much more…

None of these things would have happened were it not for the Jeb Bush Administration and Republicans actions which helped brother George W. Bush to be installed as president.

 

2004 ELECTION RIGGED

Harvey Wasserman and Robert J. Fitrakis, who wrote a book “What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft And Fraud in the 2004 Election”, explained that the combination of computer hacking, ballot destruction, and the discrepancy between exit polling (which showed a big Kerry win in Ohio) and the “real” vote tabulation, all point to one answer: the Republicans stole the 2004 election.

“A 6.7% shift in exit polls does not happen by chance. So we have irrefutable confirmation that what we were saying was true and that every piece of the puzzle in the Ohio 2004 election was flawed,” Wasserman said.

 

The Above video shows how Ohio Election Computers were hacked and how the man who oversaw the operation died mysteriously in a plane crash soon after giving a deposition.

 

2 election workers in Cleveland convicted of rigging 04 presidential recount

CLEVELAND Two election workers in the state s most populous county were convicted today of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount. The …

UPDATE: Jan 24, 2007 – CLEVELAND: Per the above article;  “Two election workers in the state s most populous county were convicted today of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount.

The prosecution accused the employees of secretly reviewing pre-selected ballots before the recount in order to avoid a more costly, time-consuming hand count of all votes.

Jacqueline Maiden, the elections coordinator who was the board s third-highest ranking employee when she was indicted last March, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee. The felony conviction carries a possible sentence of six to 18 months.

Maiden and Dreamer also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty.

The employees were accused of working behind closed doors three days before the public Dec. 16, 2004, recount to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand.

Ohio gave Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry in the close election and hold on to the White House in 2004″.

 

 

2016 ELECTION RIGGED

2016 Election Rigged for Trump

 

Cheri Jacobus, who worked in Republican politics for decades, was an RNC spokesperson & ran campaigns, a nationally recognized political strategist, pundit and writer says “Trump is an illegitimate President”.

Cheri discusses a host of bombshell issues, including; Trump never legitimately won a Presidential election (2016 & 2024), how COVID and mail-in ballots derailed Republicans plans to rig & steal the 2020 election, why right before the 2020 election expensive high speed mail sorting machines were trashed and Putin’s involvement in helping to put Trump in the White House.

 

In 27 states, a program called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck suppressed and purged enough minority voters to swing the election for Donald Trump.

The rigging was a simple process: in 27 Republican-controlled states (including critical swing states) hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people showed up to vote, but were mysteriously blocked from voting for allegedly being registered with the intent to vote in multiple states.

 

The above video recorded on November 26, 2017 with MSNBC Host Joy Reid interviewing Greg Palast is the only interview done about this on any Television Network.

 

Millions of Black, Hispanic & Asians Voters Have Been Purged

Greg Palast, Al Jazeera, BBC News, The Guardian/Billionaires & Ballot Bandits joins Thom Hartmann. Jim Crow-style voter suppression has returned to America. That’s the conclusion of a shocking new report from investigative journalist Greg Palast for Al Jazeera America that takes a deep dive into a controversial program known as Interstate Crosscheck. According to his investigation “election officials in 27 states, most of them Republicans, have launched a program that threatens a massive purge of voters from the rolls. Millions, especially black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters, are at risk.”

 

Per the above article: The massive election-rigging scandal the media ignored. In 27 states, a program called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck suppressed and purged minority votes

The election of 2016 may well have been stolen — or to use Donald Trump’s oft-repeated phrase — “rigged,” and nobody in the media seems willing to discuss it.

The rigging was a pretty simple process, in fact: in 27 Republican-controlled states (including critical swing states) hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people showed up to vote, but were mysteriously blocked from voting for allegedly being registered with the intent to vote in multiple states.

Greg Palast, an award-winning investigative journalist, writes a stinging piece in Rolling Stone magazine (August 2016 edition), predicting that the presidential election had already been decided: “The GOP’s Stealth War Against Voters.” He also wrote and produced a brilliant documentary on this exact subject that was released well before the election, titled The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

He said a program called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck had been quietly put together in Kansas and was being used by Republican secretaries of state in 27 states to suppress and purge African American, Asian and Hispanic votes in what would almost certainly be the swing states of the 2016 election.

Crosscheck was started by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach back in 2007 under the guise of combating so-called voter fraud. In the ultimate thumb in the eye to the American voter, the state where Crosscheck started was the only state to refuse to participate in a New York Times review of voter fraud in the 2016 election, which found that, basically, there wasn’t any fraud at the level of individual voters. Turns out, according to Palast, that a total of 7 million voters—including up to 344,000 in Pennsylvania, 589,000 in North Carolina and up to 449,000 in Michigan (based on available Crosscheck data from 2014)—may have been denied the right to have their votes counted under this little known but enormously potent Crosscheck program.

 

Here are examples of Crosscheck in action:
Trump victory margin in Michigan: 13,107
Michigan Crosscheck purge list: 449,922

Trump victory margin in Arizona: 85,257
Arizona Crosscheck purge list: 270,824

Trump victory margin in North Carolina: 177,008
North Carolina Crosscheck purge list: 589,393

“University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer found that between 12,000 and 23,000 registered voters in Madison and Milwaukee—and as many as 45,000 statewide—were deterred from voting by the ID law. “We have hard evidence there were tens of thousands of people who were unable to vote because of the voter ID law”. Link to full article below.

That’s way more than enough votes to swing the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

There’s more…

Exit polls in key states, FLORIDA , NORTH CAROLINA and WISCONSIN showed Hillary Clinton the winner.

Using exit poll totals compiled by election researcher Theodore de Macedo Soares, seen in the table below on this page as well as available at this link, compared to an ongoing tally of raw votes totals posted at this link by Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report, here is the discrepancy that has caused the suspicions of what Trump himself would call a “rigged election.”

Note that actual vote totals are compiled as of November 16.

FLORIDA — 29 Electoral Votes

(numbers equal percentage points)

Exit Polls: Clinton 47.7, Trump 46.4 — Clinton wins by 1.3

Actual: Clinton 47.8, Trump 49.0 — Trump wins by 1.2

Trump gain between exit polls and actual results: 2.5

NORTH CAROLINA — 15 Electoral Votes

Exit Polls: Clinton 48.6, Trump 46.5 — Clinton wins by 2.1

Actual: Clinton 46.1, Trump 49.9 — Trump wins by 3.8

Trump gain: 5.9

WISCONSIN — 10 Electoral Votes

Exit Polls: Clinton 48.2, Trump 44.3 — Clinton wins by 3.9

Actual: Clinton 47.6, Trump 48.8 — Trump wins by 1.2

Trump gain: 5.1

Full story at: heavy.com/news/2016/11/2016-exit-polls-did-hillaty-clinton-win-presidential-election-voter-fraud-donald-trump-lose-rigged/

 

OTHER SOURCES CLAIM THE 2016 ELECTION WAS RIGGED

The League of Women Voters claim “The 2016 Presidential Election Was Rigged” in their article at lwv.org/press-releases/2016-presidential-election-was-rigged by Voter Suppression.

Chris Carson, president of the League of Women Voters stated “In Wisconsin, President-elect Trump beat Secretary Clinton by roughly 27,000 votes, however according to federal court, 300,000 registered voters lacked the proper photo ID.

Details regarding 300,000 registered voters lacked photo ID at thenation.com/article/the-gops-attack-on-voting-rights-was-the-most-under-covered-story-of-2016/

“We are not talking about vigilante voter intimidation,” said Carson. “We are talking about official, legal voter suppression by state legislatures and election officials.”

Like the 2000 & 2004 Elections, this matter is not being reported by the mainstream media.

 

Mapping Donald Trump’s Many Ties To Vladimir Putin’s Russia

 

The US intelligence community found that Russia tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 US election by boosting Donald Trump and harming Hillary Clinton, according to the declassified intelligence report released by the Director of National Intelligence.

Click the link below to read and download a copy of the report;

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3254237/Russia-Hack-Report.pdf

 

Trump was complicit in encourging Russia to engage in Espionage when he said; Russia: “If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”. It’s clear Russia was listening because within hours, Wikileaks released 8,000 DNC emails. The DNC was hacked by two groups that linked to senior levels of the Russian government.

 

Rachel Maddow reviews some of the highlights of a lengthy report from The Washington Post that Vladimir Putin was directing a cyberattack on the U.S. election.

 

Russia used Manafort, WikiLeaks to help Trump in 2016: Senate report

 

 

Senate Intelligence Committee releases final report on Russian interference in 2016

The report concluded that the 2016 Trump campaign had repeated contacts with Russian operatives, and said campaign chairman Paul Manafort “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

 

New evidence on Russian interference in 2016 election

A Senate Intelligence Committee report details how Russia targeted voting systems across the U.S. and warns the threat persists today.

 

13 Russians Indicted With Charges Of Interfering In 2016 U.S. Election

 

Vladimir Putin not only engaged in tactics to influence the US 2016 election, but has a history in meddling in other countries elections to help install Right Wingers into positions of powers, because Right Wingers anti-democratic authoritarian policies and ideologies align well with that of Fascist Dictator Putin.

 

Many themes of Trump dossier have borne out over time

Rachel Maddow reviews how recent revelations and admissions by Trump team members have shown many of the themes of the Trump dossier to have merit.

 

More Pieces Of Donald Trump Russia Dossier Check Out

Rachel Maddow notes that while the dossier of intelligence about Donald Trump ties to Russia remains unconfirmed, pieces of it have checked out upon investigation by the press, though the primary government investigators are former Trump campaign officials.

 

Note how this machine is rigged for Romney in 2012.

 

FLORIDA REPUBLICANS USE DIRTY TRICKS TO ‘WIN’ ELECTIONS

CNN reports how Republicans used “dirty tricks” to Rig Three (3) 2020 Florida State Senate Elections with Dark Money and 3rd Party Phantom Candidates.

(Per the article below from CNN) “A month before Election Day in Florida a mysterious company called Proclivity, Inc. contributed $550,000 to a pair of newly formed political action committees in the state. Two days later, the money flowed from the PACs to an Orlando-area print and advertising firm.

Shortly thereafter, came a torrent of nearly identical political fliers seemingly intended to siphon away support from Democratic candidates by tricking voters into casting their ballots for purported spoiler candidates who demonstrated no real interest in getting elected. None, for example, engaged in typical campaigning activities or raised significant funds.
In one case, the mailers appear to have helped a Republican—a co-founder of Latinas For Trump—unseat the Democratic incumbent in a state Senate race by a razor-thin margin of just 32 votes”.

 

A dark money mystery in the Sunshine State | CNN Politics

A dark money mystery in Florida centers on the campaign of a spoiler candidate who helped a Republican win by 32 votes.

 

Former FL GOP chair says ‘right-wing crazies’ want to suppress black vote

Former Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer testified in a lawsuit filed against his former party that “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” wanted to suppress the black vote through Voter ID and tactics like current state Gov. Rick Scott’s efforts to purge voter rolls.

Jim Greer, stated “I sat in on many meetings where it was discussed how to make sure what happened in 2008, when Obama brought out the college-aged voters, the minority voters, never happened again”.

 

91-Year-Old Decorated WWII Veteran Targeted By Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Voter Purge

Florida Republicans took voter suppression to brazen extremes. After the 2010 election, Republican Gov. Rick Scott instructed Secretary of State Ken Browning to compile a massive database of alleged “non-citizen” voters. This resulted in a 91-year-old World War II veteran who won a Bronze star being told by the state of Florida to prove he is a citizen or be removed from voter roll.

 

 

DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF VOTERS

Republicans continue to pass laws which make it difficult for Minorities, Young People, the Elderly and Women to Vote. A Judge who has been voting for 49 years couldn’t vote in her own courthouse where everyone knew her because of repressive Republican Voter ID Laws in Texas.

 

ELECTIONS RIGGED BY THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE/span>

The Electoral College Is A Plague On America

The Electoral College allowed two unpopular Republican candidates who received the least votes in 2 elections since 2000 to become President; George W. Bush who lost by almost 600,000 votes in the 2000 election and Donald Trump who lost by 2.84 million in 2016.

 

If we had a REAL democracy, the person who gets the most votes would be the winner. In every other country which has a democracy on this planet, the person who receives the most votes is the winner. The fact that we don’t elect our president by the most votes proves there is NO REAL DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES.

And the fault is 100% REPUBLICANS… because they REFUSE to eliminate the Electoral College because it put George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 in the White House against the will of the majority.

 

2000 and 2016  Elections Stolen By The Electoral Collage

The Electoral College has allowed two unpopular Republican candidates who received less popular votes in 2 elections since 2000 to become President; George W. Bush who lost by almost 600,000 votes in the 2000 election and Donald Trump who lost by 2.9 million votes. Neither of these incompetent Republicans should have been president. More people voted against them than for them.

 

Minority Rule Is Killing The United States

Lawrence O’Donnell looks at how the Electoral College is forcing Americans to live under a nation where a Supreme Court majority, mostly picked by presidents who lost the popular vote, is poised to take away a Constitutional right for the first time in U.S. history.

 

A video trip down memory lane shows how Trump Republicans of 2020 are as lawless as Nixon Republicans from 1972

 

 

Republican Party efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election – Wikipedia

The Republican Party’s efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election were attempts to stunt voter access, election oversight, and post-election certification. They include strategies to modify voting laws and to place partisan figures in Republican-led states in order to restrict demographics more likely to vote Democratic.

THE FOLLOWING IS DIRECTLY QUOTED FROM THE ABOVE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE:

“The Republican Party’s efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election involve a series of coordinated actions intended to influence election outcomes at both federal and state levels. These efforts, which were preceded by Republican efforts to restrict voting following the 2020 presidential election, are characterized by legislative, legal, and administrative strategies that sought to affect voter access, election oversight, and post-election certification processes. This initiative grew out of widespread claims within certain Republican Party circles about election integrity, many of which trace back to the 2020 United States presidential election and Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, including the election denial movement in the United States, despite a lack of substantial evidence supporting these allegations.

Key elements of these strategies include attempts to modify voting laws, with a focus on restrictions that could disproportionately impact demographics more likely to vote for the Democratic Party. Additionally, Republican-led states saw a push to place partisan figures in election oversight positions, which may influence how election laws are interpreted and enforced. There is also a significant legal component, with numerous court cases challenging aspects of the voting process and aiming to set precedents for handling election disputes. These efforts sparked intense debate across the political spectrum, with proponents arguing that the measures “are necessary to ensure election security”, while critics contend that they could undermine democratic processes by restricting voter access and eroding public trust in election fairness”.

“For decades, Republicans sought evidence of what they allege is rampant voting fraud in the United States. Multiple studies during this time found that election fraud is extremely rare. In 2024, an election fraud database maintained by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, showed evidence of 1,513 instances of fraud over the preceding 42 years, although many of those instances have been challenged as dubious. After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he falsely asserted the election had been rigged and stolen from him; the false allegations came to be known as his big lie. Many of his followers developed an election denial movement to advance this false narrative. As of August 2023, a large majority of Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents continued to believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected in 2020”.

“In a 1980 speech, Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation said, “I don’t want everybody to vote … our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” As president, Trump falsely claimed that millions of undocumented migrants illegally voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 United States presidential election, depriving him of the popular vote victory”.

“As a result, Trump established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May 2017; the commission was disbanded several months later, with member Matthew Dunlap, the Maine secretary of state, writing to commission chair Mike Pence and vice chair Kris Kobach that, contrary to public statements by Trump and Kobach, the commission did not find “substantial” voter fraud.” Critics said the commission’s intent was to disenfranchise or deter legal voters. Kobach, then the Kansas secretary of state, had a history of making false or unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud to advocate for voting restrictions. The commission did not find a single instance of a noncitizen voting”.

“The Conservative news outlets Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN promoted false election fraud allegations in the weeks following the 2020 election, including conspiracy theories that voting machines had been rigged to favor Biden; in response, voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic filed defamation lawsuits against those three networks, some of their employees and others. Fox News agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement to Dominion in April 2023 after it was revealed that top on-air personalities and executives knew the allegations were false but continued to promote them anyway. The 2022 Dinesh D’Souza film 2000 Mules falsely alleged that Democratic Party operatives engaged in an illegal ballot harvesting operation across five swing states during the 2020 election”.

“By April 2024, dozens of Republicans in four states were under indictment for their alleged involvement in the Trump fake electors plot and related Pence Card conspiracy, parts of wide-ranging efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Those indicted included Trump and several of his close associates, including Christina Bobb who leads the Republican National Committee (RNC) election integrity legal efforts in the 2024 presidential election. In September 2024, Hanna Rosin published an article about the aftermath of the January 6 attack in the lives of the insurrectionists, which mentions how they have created “a new mythology on the right”, which could lead to a new attempt at overturning the election should Trump lose it. The Justice Department planned to monitor compliance with voting rights laws on Election Day in 27 states. Since at least 2003, journalists, election security experts, and activists have repeatedly warned about security vulnerabilities and other flaws in the election infrastructure of the United States”.

Historical allegations of cheating by the Republican Party

“Commentators have repeatedly accused the Republican Party of applying deceptive methods in order to win elections. The New Republic alleged that Republican Party political campaigns have a history of applying “voter intimidation techniques, more direct threats of violence, foreign disinformation, and super PAC and dark money skullduggery” as strategies, citing the possible sabotage of Vietnam War peace talks during the 1968 election; the Watergate scandal during the 1972 election; the 1980 October Surprise theory; the tactics of Lee Atwater during the 1988 election; the “butterfly ballots”, actions of Katherine Harris, Brooks Brothers riot, and Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case during the 2000 election; the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal; and the swiftboating of John Kerry during the 2004 election. Truthout cited the Volusia error during the 2000 election; voter roll purges during the 2000 and 2004 elections (in Florida and Ohio, respectively); false information about voting logistics by election boards controlled by Republicans; voter intimidation; and voter ID laws. Truthout also cited “voter irregularities” in Ohio during the 2004 election involving a Republican-connected company SMARTech, and also noted that Anonymous claimed without evidence that Karl Rove unsuccessfully attempted to use Mitt Romney’s ORCA get-out-the-vote system to rig the 2012 election in Ohio in a similar fashion as alleged to have occurred in 2004″.

“In Al Jazeera America, Greg Palast warned in 2014 of the impact that the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which he accused of over-representing Black, Asian and Hispanic voters in its efforts to purge potentially millions of names from voter rolls, could have on the 2014 and 2016 elections. Palast assessed that 1.1 million voters were removed from voter rolls by the 2016 election, while the Brennan Center determined that nearly 16 million voters were removed by states between 2014 and 2016. Crosscheck had been criticized by journalists and researchers for poor accuracy”.

Historical connections between Russia and the Republican Party

“Craig Unger documented ties between the Republican Party and the Russian government dating back to at least 1997, including Tom DeLay visiting Moscow to meet Viktor Chernomyrdin, Ed Buckham’s U.S. Family Network being funded $1 million by Russians to influence DeLay’s vote on bailing out the Russian economy, and Paul Manafort’s ties to Russia (among others). Manafort had given polling data to a Russian intelligence officer in 2016. The Washington Spectator traced these ties back to a 1995 visit to Russia by Allan C. Carlson, who subsequently formed the World Congress of Families after observing commonalities between American and Russian conservatives. Nafeez Ahmed has also noted the ties between the Heritage Foundation and the Danube Institute, which is funded by the government of Viktor Orbán and is supportive of the Russian government. Paul Dans, the former leader of Project 2025, appeared on a podcast from Tenet Media, which was accused by the Department of Justice of being operated by Russian agents”.

“Tom Nichols theorized that the Republican Party’s overall affinity for Russia and Vladimir Putin in particular may be due in part to questions about the party’s long-term viability which could be addressed by “nationalist appeals, combined with electoral fraud and selective use of the prison system” that were modeled by Putin”.

Republican Party and the International Democratic Union

“The Republican Party is a member of the International Democratic Union (IDU), which The Tyee described as a global group that is “dedicated to electing right-wing governments around the world”. According to a 1985 CIA memo, the Republican Party and the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan had provided half of all funding for the organization at the time. Other members include the Conservative Party of Canada, the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, Fidesz in Hungary (led in 2025 by Viktor Orbán), Likud in Israel (led in 2025 by Benjamin Netanyahu) and (until 2023) the Bharatiya Janata Party in India. Several of their leaders had gained political power with help from Arthur J. Finkelstein, such as Orbán, Netanyahu and Trump. The IDU shares resources with its members on “campaign technology, fund-raising techniques, opinion polling, advertising and campaign organization”. The Conservative Party of Canada and the Republican Party had closely collaborated on resources and strategy during the 2000s and 2010s”.

“Under the leadership of Stephen Harper, Mike Roman was the treasurer and then assistant chairman of the IDU until Roman was indicted for allegedly participating in attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. During the 2008 United States presidential election, Roman had shared a video of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, which Richard Hasen had alleged to be an example of a false or exaggerated claim of voter fraud. Roman had written in a 2008 blog post, “If an election is worth winning, then there is someone willing to steal it.”

 

Allegations of rigged elections

“To sow election doubt, Trump escalated use of “rigged election” and “election interference” statements in advance of the 2024 election compared to the previous two elections—the statements described as part of a “heads I win; tails you cheated” rhetorical strategy.”

“During the 2024 campaign, Trump often referred to “election integrity” to allude to his continuing claim that the 2020 election was rigged, as well as predictions of future mass election fraud. As he did during the 2020 election cycle, Trump claimed that Democrats would try to rig the 2024 election. Many Republicans reported to believe that Democratic Party have and continue to engage in systemic election fraud, with some being concerned regarding election integrity. By 2022, Republican politicians and conservative talk radio cable news outlets echoed the statement of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon that “if Democrats don’t cheat, they don’t win”.

“The Heritage Foundation has been closely aligned with the Republican Party since its founding in 1973. In 2023, the foundation published Project 2025, a blueprint for Trump’s second presidency. In July 2024, Mike Powell, the group’s executive director for its Oversight Project, said that “as things stand right now, there is a zero percent chance of a free and fair election in the United States of America”, adding, “I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.” Heritage released a report predicting without supporting evidence that Biden might try to retain power “by force” if he were to lose in November. Election law expert Rick Hasen remarked that “this is gaslighting and it is dangerous in fanning flames that could lead to potential violence.”

“The Heritage Oversight Project produced videos for distribution on social media and conservative media outlets that made false or misleading claims about the extent of noncitizen voting registrations. In one video that was sent viral by an Elon Musk repost, Heritage falsely claimed that 14% of noncitizens in Georgia were registered, concluding that “the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy”. Heritage based their findings on an extrapolation of hidden camera interview responses from seven residents in a Norcross, Georgia, apartment complex. State investigators found the seven people had never registered. During the closing weeks of the campaign, Trump’s campaign and its allies revived allegations from 2020 that voting machines were rigged. The claims were widespread on social media and were frequently mentioned in lawsuits filed by Republicans. Trump and Musk repeated baseless claims of fraud and “cheating” in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in the days before Election Day”.

“Claims by Trump and Republican allies of election fraud persisted up to Election Day on November 5. After Trump was declared the winner, these claims had largely stopped, with his “election integrity” allies crediting his victory to their efforts”.

Seeking vulnerabilities in the election system

“The New York Times reported in July 2024 that “the Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system” by systematically searching for vulnerabilities. The effort involves a network of powerful Republican lawyers and activists, many of whom were involved in the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It involves restricting voting and short-circuiting the certification process should Trump lose. The Republican strategy involved first persuading voters that the election is about to be stolen by Democrats, despite lacking evidence. After the election, if Trump were to lose, lawyers would attempt to challenge decades of settled law as to how elections are certified. The New York Times reported the efforts had “been quietly playing out in courts, statehouses and county boards for months, and is concentrated in critical battlegrounds”. In October 2024, The Washington Post identified as vulnerabilities leading to a possible attempt at overturning the election’s results the following: widespread false information, weeks-long recounts, lawsuits delaying final results, breakdown in certifying results, disruptions at elector meetings, Congress stalling the certification, and a wild card (“something new could be tried that attorneys and election officials haven’t yet gamed out”)”.

“Nebraska is one of two states that does not have a winner-take-all system of awarding electoral college votes but rather allocates the votes by its three congressional districts. One district contains the Omaha metro area, which can tend to lean Democrat (Obama won the district in 2008, as did Biden in 2020), while the other two are more rural and vote solid Republican. During 2024, some Nebraska Republicans sought to change the state’s 1991 law that created its electoral college allocation system to winner-take-all and remove the likely elector for Kamala Harris. The proposal was blocked by Republican state senators; by September 2024, it was revived with pressure brought by Trump, all of the state’s Republican representatives, and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham”.

“During the 2024 Donald Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump revealed that he and House Speaker Mike Johnson had a “little secret”, stating: “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a little secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over.” Johnson confirmed the existence of the plan. Commentators speculated that they were referring to a contingent election, in which the United States House of Representatives elects the president; or a plot to convince Republican state legislatures or Republican governors in states that Trump would lose to not certify the results or submit slates of electors before the deadline, reducing the number of electors needed to win the electoral college vote”.

Breaching and attempted breaching of voter machines

“At an August 2021 event organized by Mike Lindell, copies of software from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Colorado and Michigan were distributed and posted to the public Internet. Election security experts warned that the release undermines trust in election security and allows for hackers to conduct vulnerability assessments, counter defenses, “sabotage the system, alter ballot design or even try to change results”. Three vendors dominate election technology in the United States, limiting the ability for election officials to replace an existing system. Mike Lindell stated that his goal is to remove voting machines entirely and switch to paper ballots, a process that election officials warned would be tedious, time-consuming and prone to errors”.

“CNN reported that in text messages to Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, which conducted the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit, Michael Flynn expressed a goal to “fundamentally change the way votes are counted at the state level”.

“In August 2023, Matthew DePerno, the former Republican nominee for the 2022 Michigan Attorney General election, and former Republican state representative Daire Rendon were charged with “undue possession of a voting machine, willfully damaging a voting machine and conspiracy”. DePerno spread false claims about the 2020 United States presidential election”.

“Election denial activists had spread a password that they alleged to be used in Dominion voting machines in Georgia, including wearing the alleged password on t-shirts”.

“In 2020, J. Alex Halderman, a computer science and engineering professor, discovered a software vulnerability in Georgia’s voting machines which made it possible for hackers to change votes. While Dominion developed a patch to address these vulnerabilities, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that the machines would be updated after the 2024 election, dismissing Halderman’s findings as “theoretical and imaginary.”

“In December 2022, election experts sent a letter to the United States Department of Justice that described a “multi-state conspiracy to copy voting software” that was at least partially funded by notable Trump supporters such as Sidney Powell and asking for a federal investigation. In December 2023, a follow-up open letter from computer scientists, election security experts and voter advocacy organizations listed repeated attempts by allies of Donald Trump to access voting system software in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and Colorado, again calling for a federal investigation, noting that the software is used nationwide. Entire election databases from multiple counties were also copied. Electronic pollbooks, ballot scanners, servers for vote counting, USB flash drives, and memory cards were also copied in Coffee County, Georgia. At least one breach had also occurred in North Carolina. In at least four cases, election officials had to decertify or replace voting equipment. Voting experts expressed alarm over the breaches due to their breaking of the chain of custody over ballots and tabulators; as well as invasion of voter privacy. On November 13, 2024, a third open letter was sent by the same organization, Free Speech for People, to Kamala Harris, warning her of “serious election security breaches that have threatened the security and integrity of the 2024 elections” and urging her to request hand recounts in at least four swing states. The letter noted that voting system breaches have allowed for access to main servers, tabulators and election databases for both Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software, election vendors which collectively count approximately 70% of votes across the United States”.

“Between at least June and October 2024, partial passwords for election machines were exposed in a hidden tab in a spreadsheet on the Colorado secretary of state’s website. According to the secretary of state’s office, the machines are still protected by requiring two distinct passwords for each system, which are stored separately, by not connecting the machines to the Internet, and by storing the machines in rooms that can only be accessed with ID badges and are continuously monitored by video cameras. An investigation by a law firm concluded that the hidden tab was created by an employee who worked in the office between 2020 and 2023. A second employee, who, according to the office, was unaware of the hidden tab, posted the spreadsheet online. As a witness in a lawsuit by the Libertarian Party of Colorado, a co-founder of election vigilante group U.S. Election Integrity Plan (see Election vigilante groups below) testified that he had viewed the hidden tab three times between August and October 2024, before the state was aware of the breach”.

“In October 2024, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced that voter access terminals (VAT) from Dominion, which assist persons with disabilities with ballot marking, had an issue with split ticket votes. She said that this issue affected Dominion machines nationwide”.

“The Voting Machine Hacking Village (a hacking event co-founded by Harri Hursti) at DEF CON 32 in 2024 discovered “new vulnerabilities … in several widely-fielded ballot-marking and DRE voting machines.” Due to the complexities of upgrading election equipment, election and cybersecurity experts found it unlikely that vulnerability findings from the conference would have been fixed prior to Election Day”.

“SMART Elections (a nonpartisan election integrity advocacy group that includes academics and activists) noted that Pro V&V, a voting system test laboratory, had approved software and hardware updates for Dominion and Election Systems & Software voting systems between March and September 2024, categorizing those updates as de minimis, which do not require testing. SMART Elections argued that this lack of testing for what it described as comprehensive updates risked malware entering the voting systems”.

Vulnerabilities from ES&S

“Election Systems & Software (ES&S) was founded by Republicans, was financed by the families of Howard Ahmanson Jr. and Nelson Bunker Hunt, is owned by a private equity firm, McCarthy Group and its investors are unknown as of December 2019. Chuck Hagel was chairman of a predecessor company to ES&S, and the treasurer for Hagel’s campaign during the 1996 United States Senate election in Nebraska, Michael McCarthy, was the founder of McCarthy Group. According to Bev Harris’ book on black box voting, ES&S is tied to Kiewit Corporation, which as of 2004 was involved in a number of bid rigging scandals; advocated for privatization of highways in the United States; owned CalEnergy, and was heavily involved in telecommunications via its ties to Level 3 Communications and installations of fiber-optic cables underneath highways and video surveillance cameras on roads.The Omaha World-Herald newspaper owned a stake in ES&S between 1986 and 2011. The Peter Kiewit Foundation in turn owned the Omaha World-Herald as of 2004.”

“As of October 2019, ES&S controls about 50% of the election system market of the United States; makes most of its money from long-term maintenance contracts; has filed lawsuits when it fails to win contracts or has them taken away; hired former election officials as lobbyists; donated to political campaigns and lobbied politicians; and threatened lawsuits against voting rights activists and security researchers.Between 2013 and 2020, ES&S has donated at least $30,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee.”

“Various issues with ES&S systems have been reported since at least 1998, including missing votes potential duplicate votes, poor calibration of touch screens leading to misinterpreted votes, names missing from voter rolls, incorrectly printed ballots and outdated technology. Concerns have also been raised by Ron Wyden about the security of its supply chain, as many parts were made in China and the Philippines.ES&S claimed that they had worked with Idaho National Laboratory for vulnerability testing, but as of December 2019, those findings have not been made public. In August 2018, Kamala Harris, Mark Warner, Susan Collins and James Lankford sent a letter to ES&S asking about their stance on independent security research after the company dismissed and discouraged such research on their systems. After the 2016 election, Jill Stein alleged that ES&S machines were vulnerable to hacking and difficult to audit, points supported by researchers. Issues with ES&S machines have also been reported during elections in 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.”

“For example, during the 2024 elections, ES&S voting machines in Cambria County, Pennsylvania had issues scanning ballots due to a “ballot printing error”, “[causing] voter confusion, long lines of voters, and many individuals [leaving] the polling locations without casting a ballot”. The county’s election director had retired on the same day that the election results were certified. State Representative Frank Burns called for an investigation by the Pennsylvania Department of State, and had asked for records about the ballots, voting machines, testing and internal communications, but his right to know request was denied by county election officials. By April 2025, the new county elections director had found a certification document stating that pre-election tests on voting machines were successfully completed in September 2024. Burns expressed concern why election officials were not aware of this document.”

“The Navajo Nation in Apache County, Arizona reported issues with voting machines and ballot printers on Election Day, leading to long lines that resulted in some voters being turned away. According to the Verified Voting Foundation, all voting equipment used in that county on Election Day 2024 was manufactured by ES&S. Similarly, there were issues with voting machines on Election Day in Queens, New York, a county that also used ES&S at the time.”

“In January 2020, NBC News reported that election security experts found at least 35 voting machines that were connected to the Internet as of the summer of 2019. While ES&S, Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic have all admitted to adding modems in some of their tabulators and scanners (for the purpose of quickly sharing unofficial election results), all of the voting machines that were accessible online were manufactured by ES&S and located in 11 states (including Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan) and Washington D.C. Some of these machines have been connected for months or possibly years at a time. Critical systems connected to the Internet via a firewall include vote tabulators and “the election-management system that is used in some counties to program voting machines before elections.” Other security vulnerabilities – including missing firewall security patches, outdated SFTP server software, remote-access software, outdated operating systems, exposed passwords, exposed data of registered voters, no logging of some events, hash verification issues (noting that the hash verification was performed by ES&S instead of its customers), ballot marking device/scanner “hybrid” systems that can be changed with fake votes on machine-marked ballots after those ballots are cast, accessible SD and USB ports, plain text encryption keys for voter data, no set BIOS passwords, disabled Secureboot, presence of bloatware, no tamper-evident seals, immediate root access, unencrypted hard drives, use of simple default passwords, immutable passwords set such that “the same two passwords were used for every machine manufactured”, susceptibility of central scanners to vote flipping, and “poor physical security protections that could allow undetected tampering” – were also reported. Free Press also warned of multiple vulnerabilities from electronic pollbooks manufactured by ES&S, including the possibility of compromised network infrastructure, voting machines, registration servers, voter data and/or the privacy of votes, as well as the risk of voter suppression.”

“A December 2020 investigation by DCReport found that the 2020 re-elections of Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins had all occurred in states where votes were primarily tabulated by ES&S, arguing that their wins were improbable due to low or close pre-election polls. In the case of McConnell, DCReport found large vote leads in counties that had typically voted for Democrats (including in counties in which he had not previously won); discrepancies related to split-ticket voting; and issues with Kentucky voter records. McConnell had blocked legislation in the Senate for election security in 2019, the same year that his campaign committee received at least $2,000 from ES&S. A further investigation by the same outlet later that month found that multiple ES&S executives and lobbyists are connected with Republican party politicians and election officials (such as Sandra Mortham, Marci Andino and the office of Brian Kemp); that Chris Wlaschin, the former chief information security official at the United States Department of Health and Human Services during the Trump administration, had joined ES&S to lead their security team; that 40 out of 50 states partially use ES&S for casting and counting votes; and that during the 2020 election, all but three of the 25 states that Trump had won had partially or fully used ES&S voting machines. A 2021 article also noted that several Republican officials had refused to purchase equipment from Dominion due to false claims of fraud during the 2020 United States presidential election, alleging that ES&S would benefit by increasing its market share. Similarly, The Daily Dot reported that election security advocate Jennifer Cohn accused Republicans who falsely alleged that Dominion had helped commit fraud in the 2020 election of attempting to put Dominion out of business.”

“The Institute for Southern Studies reported that, during the 2000 Venezuelan general election, Hugo Chávez and Venezuelan election officials accused ES&S of interference due to widespread issues with the company’s voting machines.”

“Beth Clarkson, a Wichita State University statistician, filed an open records lawsuit for paper tapes from electronic voting machines in Sedgwick County, Kansas from the 2014 election, naming then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as a defendant. She alleged that there were statistical anomalies that favored Republican politicians in vote counts in large precincts in multiple elections across the United States, assessing that this pattern was due to either voter fraud or a demographic trend unexplained by polling. According to the Verified Voting Foundation, all voting equipment used in that county on Election Day 2014 was manufactured by ES&S.”

“Between February 26, 2024 and February 24, 2025, Chris Wlaschin was appointed as a member of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee as a technical expert.”

Vulnerabilities of electronic pollbooks

“Journalists have noted security vulnerabilities with electronic pollbooks (e-pollbooks) in the lead-up to the 2024 election, such as many being designed to be connected to the Internet, the lack of national standards for security and reliability, the lack of a system that tracks incidents with e-pollbooks, past efforts by hackers from Russia and Iran to obtain voter data, and the subsequent risk of voters being deleted from the voter rolls by unauthorized users.”

“They have also been blamed for delays in the voting process. As of 2018, they are used by 36 states. ES&S is one of the main manufacturers of e-pollbooks and they, along with Diebold Election Systems, had lobbied for election officials to use them after the Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002. Free Press reported that some ES&S e-pollbooks could communicate via Bluetooth to voting machines.”

Vulnerabilities in mail-in voting

“Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general since June 2020, has donated at least $685,230 to the Republican Party between 2018 and 2020, has donated $1.2 million to Trump, and implemented policies that were primarily responsible for the 2020 United States Postal Service crisis.”

“Between 2020 and 2024, the United States Postal Service (USPS) changed its goals for first-class mail delivery from a three-day maximum to a five-day maximum, and had raised the price of first-class postage by 33%. The Washington Post stated that these changes had little impact on the service’s finances, which included a $2.1 billion net loss during the first quarter of fiscal 2024. Gerry Connolly stated in response to these changes that “any effort to degrade service while raising prices is a recipe for a death spiral at the Postal Service”.

“In July 2024, the USPS inspector general published a report noting that some service workers were not following proper procedures for mail-in ballots in some places, and that some mailed ballots were missing postmarks, which are required in many states. The report further warned that some ballots were at risk of not being counted due to both current USPS policies for processing mail as well as changes by DeJoy’s Delivering for America plan. Some changes were made within days of the 2024 primary elections in Georgia and Virginia.”

“Lawmakers such as Mark Pocan were concerned about plans by the USPS to consolidate regional hubs, arguing that mail delivery would slow down. Significant slowdowns had been observed throughout the United States as of April 2024. Some of these regional hubs were located in states such as Virginia, Oregon, Texas and Missouri as well as swing states Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin. These consolidations have been paused until January 2025, following criticism from lawmakers.”

In September 2024, the National Association of State Election Directors and National Association of Secretaries of State sent an open letter to DeJoy supporting the inspector general report, warning that the USPS has marked election mail to voters as undeliverable at “higher than usual rates, even in cases where a voter is known not to have moved” and that ballots that were processed in some places arrived at election offices 10+ days after the postmark date. In some states such as Utah dozens or hundreds of ballots for 2024 primary elections had arrived over 10 days after being postmarked. Other problems highlighted in the letter include “lost or delayed election mail, and front-line training deficiencies impacting USPS’s ability to deliver election mail in a timely and accurate manner”. These issues have been described as “systemic”. There is the risk that, if mail is returned to the original sender, voters may miss their mail-in ballots or removed from voter registration rolls.

“Republicans have filed lawsuits to stop states from counting postmarked mail-in ballots that are received by election officials after Election Day. About 20 states, plus Washington, D.C., accept and count mail-in ballots received after Election Day as long as they are postmarked on or before that day. As of August 2024, these lawsuits have been filed in Nevada, Illinois, North Dakota and Mississippi. Plaintiffs include the Republican National Committee, Mark Splonskowski (the Burleigh County Auditor who is supported by Public Interest Legal Foundation) the Mississippi Republican Party and a county election commissioner.”

“Several issues were reported during the 2024 election with mail-in ballots, including discarded ballots, stranded or delayed ballots, undated ballots (which were not counted in Pennsylvania following lawsuits by the Republican National Committee, the Pennsylvania Republican Party and David McCormick), stolen and/or forged ballots,ballots misdirected between and within states, unprocessed ballots, and destroyed ballots.”

“Issues had also occurred with voter registration forms, including damaged or incomplete forms and potentially fraudulent forms or mail-in ballot applications.”

Challenging registrations, ballots and certifications

“Following Trump’s 2020 loss amid his false allegations of fraud, Republican lawmakers initiated a sweeping effort to make voting laws more restrictive in several states across the country and to take control of the administrative management of elections at the state and local level. By 2023, organizations funded by dark money had met quietly with officials in Republican-controlled states to create an incubator of policies that would restrict ballot access and amplify false claims that fraud is rampant in elections. Led by the Heritage Foundation, the groups include the Honest Elections Project, which is among a network of conservative organizations associated with Leonard Leo, a longtime prominent figure in the Federalist Society.”

“The Washington Post reported in June 2024 on indications that county-level Republicans in swing states might be preparing to challenge and delay their certifications of voting results in 2024. Such delays might cause a state to miss deadlines that ensure its electoral college votes are counted in Washington on January 6, 2025. In four state elections since 2020, county election officials withheld certifications, citing mistrust in voting machines or ballot errors, though they could not produce evidence of actual voting fraud; the certifications proceeded after state interventions, which included warnings of potential criminal charges. Two Cochise County, Arizona, officials were criminally charged for refusing to certify, not because of doubts about Cochise results but as a protest against other counties voting for Democratic state candidates. Project Democracy found that since 2020 members of state and local election boards had voted against certification more than twenty times in eight states. Voting rights activists were concerned that the continuing false allegations of election fraud since 2020 might lead to social unrest if efforts to delay certifications at the local level were overruled by state officials or courts. The failure of a state to have its electoral college votes counted on January 6 could result in neither presidential candidate reaching the minimum 270 electoral votes, causing the election to be thrown to the United States House of Representatives. In that scenario, the election outcome would be determined by a simple majority count of state delegations; Republicans hold a majority in 28 of 50 delegations in the 118th United States Congress and thus Trump would win in such a scenario. The Guardian confirmed that “experts have been particularly alarmed by efforts to try and halt certification at the local level – something that could cause delay and chaos after the presidential vote in November.”

 

Cleta Mitchell speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference

“Cleta Mitchell was a key figure in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, participating in the January 2021 Trump–Raffensperger phone call that attempted to change the certified 2020 presidential election results in Georgia That year, in association with the RNC, she launched the Election Integrity Network (EIN) to recruit, train and deploy election deniers as poll workers in eight key states for the 2024 presidential election. In recordings of spring 2022 organizing meetings obtained by Politico, RNC National Election Integrity director Josh Findlay, referencing EIN, was heard to tell others that the RNC would support efforts to provide staff, organization, and “muscle” in key states The New York Times reported that the EIN “has done more than any other group to take Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about corruption in the democratic system and turn them into action”. Gaining access to over 400 hours of Zoom meetings, The New York Times reported that EIN had closely coordinated with the RNC, four Republican secretaries of state, and a dozen state legislatures. The group was funded by multiple Republican megadonors associated with Trump, and had successfully spread conspiracy theories about voting with several right-wing media outlets and had installed activists on election boards and thousands as poll monitors and workers. EIN has also been collaborating with other groups to challenge voter rolls, including VoteRef (run by Gina Swoboda and funded by Restoration PAC, a Super PAC predominantly funded by Richard Uihlein) and Check My Vote. EIN has also been collaborating with the Election Transparency Initiative, headed by Ken Cuccinelli. The Pennsylvania Department of State described these voter registration challenges as “an attempt to circumvent the list maintenance processes that are carefully prescribed by state and federal law,” which would result in “disenfranchisement, unnecessary litigation, and a harassing diversion of already-stretched county resources.”

“The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) is a bipartisan nonprofit that helps elections officials in some 30 states manage their registration rolls with the use of software to maintain election integrity. In 2022, ERIC faced criticism from election deniers and right-wing media after the far-right blog The Gateway Pundit published a series of stories falsely suggesting it is part of a left-wing election conspiracy funded by George Soros to register Democrats. Several Republican-controlled states soon severed their association with ERIC. Members of the EIN had lobbied to have the system removed, and their activism was publicized by The Gateway Pundit and other right-wing media outlets. To supplant ERIC, Mitchell led an effort to deploy the EagleAI NETwork election software in the 2024 presidential election. NBC News reported in August 2023 that “election experts and voting rights advocates warn that an activist-led strategy risks overwhelming election workers with reports of problem registrations generated by amateurs using unreliable data. And those reports may, in turn, intimidate voters or require them to jump through hoops to maintain their voting rights.” After months of testing, by July 2024 some conservative activists found the EagleAI system was unreliable. The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law called EagleAI “a vehicle to disenfranchise voters and spread disinformation”. The Associated Press reported in June 2024 that EagleAI “is funded and used by supporters of Trump, some of whom worked to overturn the 2020 vote, and entwined with the Republican’s campaign.” AP reported EagleAI was pursuing deployment in several states, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada and Ohio. During an internal meeting about the system, Cleta Mitchell said, “The left will hate this — hate this. But we love it.” Despite its name, the software does not employ artificial intelligence, and though it is pronounced “eagle eye”, its creator denied it was named after Operation Eagle Eye, a 1960s Republican Party voter suppression effort. As of July 2024, at least one county in Georgia signed a contract to use EagleAI for voter roll maintenance.”

“EagleAI is funded by Ziklag, an American Christian organization which includes the Uihlein family and whose goals include as part of “Operation Checkmate”: “[securing] 10,640 additional unique votes in Arizona (mirroring the 2020 margin of 10,447 votes), and [removing] up to one million ineligible registrations and around 280,000 ineligible voters in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.” Citizen AG, a group self-described as part of Operation Checkmate, announced its intention to file lawsuits against counties that do not accept voter challenges from EagleAI. Ziklag also funded an effort by the American Legislative Exchange Council to share talking points about “election integrity” with Republican party state lawmakers in 2022. Ziklag has also funded right-wing Christian groups and televangelists such as Lance Wallnau to increase turnout of evangelical voters for Trump, especially in swing states.”

“Julie Adams, an EIN regional coordinator, sits on the Fulton County, Georgia, elections board and has promoted the use of EagleAI in Georgia. In May 2024, she abstained from certifying the recent county primary results, though no issues of error or misconduct had been raised. State law says that election boards “shall” certify elections if no problems were identified; the four other board members voted to certify. Adams started a lawsuit, backed by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute (AFPI), seeking a court ruling to grant election board members more discretion in certifications. Congresswoman and Georgia Democratic Party chair Nikema Williams alleged that Adams was attempting to set the stage to block certification of results in the November presidential election. Fulton is the most populous county in Georgia with a plurality of Black residents. A Fulton County superior court judge ruled against Adams in October 2024, finding that her actions were unconstitutional and violated state law. The legal arm of AFPI was led by former Florida attorney general and Trump attorney Pam Bondi who filed voting lawsuits in battleground states.”

“Omega4America, initially funded by Mike Lindell, has been promoted by election denial activists as a potential replacement for ERIC. The program has been touted by those activists as being computationally faster, but election experts have cautioned that, without motor vehicle department data, its reliability would be compromised.”

“In August 2024, the Trump-aligned majority of the Georgia State Election Board approved a new rule allowing county election boards, before certifying their election results, to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” to verify the results are “a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election”; another vote days later required that county election officials be given “all election related documentation” before certification. Opponents asserted the new rules violated state law and more than a century of state court precedent, and might lead to post-election delays or rejections of certifications in an important swing state. During a campaign rally three days before the board vote, Trump called out by name the three board members who later approved the rule, describing them as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory”. One of them was in the rally audience and stood for recognition of Trump’s praise. On August 26, Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp said he had asked Republican Georgia attorney general Chris Carr if the governor had the authority to remove election board members, citing ethics concerns expressed by some. That same day, national and state Democrats filed a suit alleging the rules changes were illegal and would create chaos. The board majority also approved a rule in September requiring all counties to hand-count their ballots for comparison to machine counts, which critics said might cause errors and confusion while also disrupting the custody of ballots, which typically remain sealed unless a recount is demanded in a challenged election. The recounts could also significantly delay the reporting of election results. In October 2024, a Fulton County superior court judge temporarily blocked the board’s hand counting rule, finding it was “too much, too late” to implement in the 2024 election. The next day, another Fulton County superior court judge found that seven new rules established by the State Election Board were “illegal, unconstitutional and void”, ordering the Georgia State Election Board to inform all state and local election officials that the rules were to be disregarded. An appeal of the latter ruling by the RNC was unanimously rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court days later.”

 

Don Lemon’s arrest proves Trump Regime’s hypocrisy & double standards due to claims Lemon violated church attendee’s civil rights while ICE Nazi Fascist Thugs are violating American’s and Protestor’s civil rights.

 

Abbe Lowell, attorney for journalist Don Lemon, talks with Jen Psaki about Donald Trump’s escalating war on the news media, and the pattern he sees among his clients who have been targeted by Donald Trump’s Justice Department, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

 

Federal agents use tear gas on Portland ‘ICE Out’ protesters, including children

What began as a peaceful demonstration in South Portland unraveled after federal agents deployed tear gas on protesters, including children.

Don Lemon was arrested by Trump Nazi Fascist Storm Trooper Gestapo Federal Agents in California after reporting a protest in a church in Minnesota.

 

Abbe Lowell, attorney for journalist Don Lemon, talks with Jen Psaki about Donald Trump’s escalating war on the news media, and the pattern he sees among his clients who have been targeted by Donald Trump’s Justice Department, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lawyer Says if someone knocks at your door and yells ‘ICE’ or ‘POLICE’ do NOT open the door. One wrong move could get you or a loved one detained or shot

In this video, attorney Marc Lopez breaks down what to do if ICE or law enforcement knocks on your door and tries to get you outside. You’ll learn the two most dangerous front-door situations: the “boot in the door” tactic and the lies/“Trojan horse” ruses law enforcement agents may use to trick you into opening up.

Attorney Marc Lopez explains:

-Why you should never open the door blind (use a door camera/peephole/window first)

-The difference between a judge-signed judicial warrant vs. an ICE administrative warrant

-5 common ICE “ruses” people fall for: probation check, good Samaritan, witness trap, photo bait, and fake emergency

-The exact words to say to protect yourself:

“I do not consent to entry. I do not consent to a search. I’m invoking my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.”

-What to do if a foot/boot blocks the door (hint: don’t use force—use your words + record everything)

Marc Lopez Law Firm
120 E. Market St., Suite 710
Indianapolis, IN 46204
317 632 3642
marclopezlaw.com

Trump’s $75M DISASTER: Melania Movie EXPOSED as Historic FLOP – Empty Theaters Shock Nation!

Trump and Melania Trump just faced their most HUMILIATING defeat yet – a $75 million documentary disaster that’s making headlines for all the wrong reasons. In this explosive video, we expose how Jeff Bezos and Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million for Melania Trump’s documentary, spent another $35 million on marketing, only to watch it become one of the biggest box office bombs in history.

This is because EVERYONE Hates their GUTS!

 

Trump Humiliated As Melania’s $75M Movie Sells ZERO Tickets

 

After weeks of chaos, we finally get to watch something beautiful: billionaires flushing $75 million down the toilet for a movie nobody wants to see. Melania Trump’s documentary opened in 2,000 theaters nationwide and couldn’t sell 50 tickets. Zero tickets sold in Jacksonville. Five tickets across four LA theaters. This isn’t just a box office disaster – it’s a masterclass in how oligarchy actually works and why their propaganda is failing.

🎯 KEY POINTS COVERED:

Amazon paid $40 million directly to Trump family for documentary rights
White House screening attended by Tim Cook, billionaires, right-wing influencers
Opening weekend box office numbers: catastrophic failure nationwide
Why Jeff Bezos doesn’t care about losing money on failed propaganda
How billionaire submission to Trump reveals their desperation
The pattern: Oracle/TikTok, media control, regulatory capture
Minneapolis ICE retreat proves democratic resistance works
Why MAGA entertainment always fails (they consume outrage, not culture)

📊 THE EVIDENCE:
Travis Acres reported ZERO tickets sold at Jacksonville’s busiest theater on opening night. Greg Mitchell found only 20 tickets sold across four Friday screenings at a major multiplex. Michael Rothschild documented five total tickets for Friday night showings across four LA area theaters. AMC Orange County: zero Saturday sales. These are Zyzzyx Road numbers – the worst opening in modern box office history.

💰 THE CORRUPTION:
Amazon’s $40 million licensing deal isn’t a business transaction – it’s protection money. Melania’s agent pitched $10 million sponsorships to CEOs for end credit mentions. Trump interests are shopping a Don Jr. hunting show. This is crony capitalism in action: media properties as loss-leader lobbying tools for trillion-dollar government relationships.

🔍 WHY THIS MATTERS:
Jeff Bezos will lose $75 million on this movie without blinking because Amazon holds AWS federal contracts, Pentagon cloud deals, and postal service relationships worth exponentially more. Tim Cook flew to DC to watch this documentary because Apple needs favorable regulatory treatment. Larry Ellison is positioning Oracle to control TikTok to suppress Palestine content and Trump criticism. Every billionaire at that screening bought something: regulatory capture, antitrust immunity, favorable tax policy.

This is how oligarchy functions in practice – not through mysterious backroom deals, but through transparent, humiliating transactions everyone can see but nobody can prosecute because it’s technically “licensing content.”

 

Liberals Laughing at TRUMP

 

 

Melania Trump: Worst First Lady in History

It’s Official: Melania Is America’s Least Favorite First Lady

To recap some of her greatest hits: there was the “I don’t really care, do you?” jacket debacle, the Melania doppelganger conspiracies, and, of course, who could ever forget what she did to that poor rose garden?

 

Melania’s Statement on US Capitol Siege

 

Melania has ‘blood on her hands’ over Capitol riots, says former aide

The Trumps ‘lack character, and have no moral compass,’ former White House aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff says

Per the above article; “Mrs Trump has issued no public statement about the events and offered no condolences to police officer Brian Sicknick’s family after he died during the riots. Four other people were killed.

Hours after the riot Stephanie Grisham, Mrs Trump’s chief of staff, announced she would be leaving her position in the administration in protest of the Capitol riots.

But Ms Wolkoff said the resignation might not be quite what it seemed.

“It came as no surprise to learn, with less than two weeks to go, Grisham jumped ship during Trump’s self-imposed reprehensible implosion. Grisham was probably fired and used this opportunity to pretend she had a moral line in the sand,” the former aide wrote.

The former aide called the first lady “an extension of her husband, just as hypocritical, speaking out of both sides of her mouth, when it suits her best”.

Melania Trump has been accused of having “blood on her hands” by a former friend and adviser following the deadly riots by a pro-Trump mob at the US Capitol on Wednesday.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who previously served as an aide to the first lady, penned a scathing editorial of the president and Mrs Trump in The Daily Beast.

“It was an assault on human life and our great democracy. Unfortunately, our president and first lady have little, if any, regard for either,” Ms Wolkoff wrote following the Capitol riots, calling the violence “shocking, awful, disheartening and shameful”. [END OF QUOTE]

 

Leaked audio tapes reveal Melania Trump saying; “Who gives a Fuck about Christmas Stuff”.

Imagine how Republicans (like Sean Hannity & Rush Limburger) would have reacted if Michelle Obama had said something like that. They’re heads would explode and they’d be having a self-righteous hissy fit! But when it’s one of their own…. CRICKETS! Repubs are such double-standards Hypocrites!

 

Melania Trump wears “I really don’t care, do u?” jacket on trip to migrant children

Her spokesperson says the $39 Zara jacket had “no hidden message,” but Trump tweeted otherwise.

Melania Trump wears “I really don’t care, do u?” jacket on trip to migrant children

Imagine how Republicans (like Sean Hannity & Rush Limburger) would have reacted if Michelle Obama had worn a jacket which says “I really don’t care, do u?” while on trip to visit migrant children.

 

The above video clip reminds me of the “The Stepford Wives”. Someone on twitter posted she was doing a “reboot”.

 

 

Description from YouTube; “Lawrence looks at First Lady Melania Trump’s cyber bullying prevention event “for our children,” held on a day her husband spent the day cyber bullying. Meanwhile, 565 children separated from their parents at the border by the Trump Administration still have not been reunited.”

 

“First Lady Melania Trump slams Democrats: “Children watching and learning about politics in our country deserve a better display of political responsibility.”

 

Melania Trump has got a lot of nerve saying ANYTHING about “Democrats” after how ROTTEN and DISGUSTING her own husband behaves…. how he has LIED and made over 20,000 false / misleading statements to the American people. The above video is only ONE example.

 

Trump repeatedly lied about the 2020 election being “Rigged & “Stolen”, inciting violence, chaos and rioting in Washington, DC. in a futile attempt to stage a coup to remain in power and be a UN-Elected Dictator. Rioters stormed the House & Senate chambers, wrecking havoc, destruction and deaths at the United States Capital.

 

 

IMO, no DECENT person could be married to Trump and Support Him

 

Melania Trump: America’s Embarrassing First Lady

Melania has damaged the idea of First Lady

The above article states;

“America’s latest First Lady Melania Trump is not someone who should be admired, and quite frankly, is a horrible role model for girls and women around the world.

And I say this not because she posed nude in photos that surfaced during her time as a model in her younger years. Melania has every right to define self-expression on her own terms. Even though she inexcusably lied about having a college degree, I don’t disparage Melania for being a college dropout. College isn’t for everyone and Melania committed herself to a fashion and modeling career. And she certainly isn’t the first person to take a phone number from a man who is on another date with someone else in a club.

If anything, these publicly known life choices reflect her keen self-awareness and sense of agency. This is how Melania Trump should be viewed – as a woman controlling her own destiny who is fully accountable for her actions.

We have no idea what ultimately attracted Melania to Donald Trump — it could have been money, curiosity, or his narcissistic brashness misinterpreted as confidence. She may not have been aware of Trump’s racist past or his poor track record with women. Nevertheless, she decided to have a relationship with Donald and have a child with him. And she’s been all in ever since.

Promoting Racism

As a wife of a presidential candidate, and now First Lady, Melania Trump has promoted racism. She did her best to reach national audiences to promote racist birtherism lies about former President Obama by insinuating America’s first Black president wasn’t legally American. This was a future First Lady messaging to young white girls and women that it’s okay to be racist. It should come as no surprise that Melania remains in union with a man who will go down as the most racist president in modern history because she helped him legitimize racism as a campaign tool.

Melania was born in Slovenia, and as the Washington Post reported, possibly violated terms of her work permit and American visa requirements. And in doing so, arguably engaged in a deportable offence upon her arrival in the United States. Ironically, she has seen her husband happily engage in systematic child abuse and family torture with his cruel and heartless “zero tolerance” immigration policy that is separating children from their families around the country. Regardless, Melania chooses to stay married to a man committing crimes against humanity and sends a dangerous message to girls and women that marital tolerance knows no bounds.

The Thief in Chief

Melania and her decision to plagiarize a speech given by former First Lady Michelle Obama during the Republican convention should also never be forgotten. Melania messaged to girls and boys that it’s okay to steal when it suits your immediate needs.

Melania has also chosen to stay in her marriage even though her husband has committed countless acts of adultery, admitted that he’s a sexual predator, and had multiple women come forward with allegations of sexual assault. Trump has publicly humiliated Melania on multiple occasions and only God knows how he treats Melania in private. Melania sends the worst possible message of incomprehensible tolerance of spousal disregard of emotions and feelings and marital violation of wedding vows is okay.

The Cyber Bully Enabler

In spite of her decisions and the man she’s married to, Melania has the audacity to start a Be Best campaign and here is the stated mission: “The mission of BE BEST is to focus on some of the major issues facing children today, with the goal of encouraging children to BE BEST in their individual paths, while also teaching them the importance of social, emotional, and physical health. BE BEST will concentrate on three main pillars: well-being, social media use, and opioid abuse.”

Melania has co-signed spending her life with a man committed to destroying the environment, children and families with his policy and actions. Her husband is America’s first presidential cyber bully and neither one of them are aggressively addressing the opioid crisis that’s happening around the nation.

Melania has no credibility to speak about anything that suggests empowerment and well-being. She chooses to stay with a man that models for their son how to live a life of disrespecting women and using power to harm, threaten and ruin lives. If she can’t put her own son’s well-being first, Melania sure as hell won’t give a damn about other people’s children”. (END OF QUOTE)

 

 

Here’s how Fox News covered Michelle Obama vs. Melania Trump

Here’s a list of comment made about Michelle Obama…

22 Times Michelle Obama Endured Rude, Racist, Eexist or Plain Ridiculous Attacks

(Source: washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/16/22-times-michelle-obama-endured-rude-racist-sexist-or-plain-dumb-attacks/)

1 She’s “strikingly ungracious.” (Jim Geraghty, writing for National Review)

2. She doesn’t look like a first lady (and she did push-ups). (Virginia voter Bobbie Lussier)

3. She disrespected the flag, as determined by lip readings of Obama whispering something inaudible to her husband during a ceremony. (Washington Times, American Thinker, Debbie Schlussel)

4. She weighs too much to care about health: “The problem is — and dare I say this — it doesn’t look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritional, dietary advice. And then we hear that she’s out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving, yeah it does — what do you mean, what do I mean?” (Rush Limbaugh)

5. She “needs to drop a few” pounds before she can be taken seriously on the issue of nutrition. (Keith Ablow, prominent member of the Fox News “Medical A-Team”)

6. She eats too much, as demonstrated by a cartoon of a chubby Michelle chowing down on a burger and fries, telling a skinny Barack to “shut up and pass the bacon!” (Big Government)

7. She didn’t support dessert enough, and she “cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children.” (Sarah Palin)

8. She forced children in day care to be weighed. (Urban legend, debunked by Snopes)

9. She has “no business being involved” in what people eat. (New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie)

10. She’s a “feminist nightmare” for focusing on her family. (Michelle Cottle, writing in Politico)

11. She is actually a man, and she murdered Joan Rivers to cover it up. (Alex Jones)

12. She’s not classy enough and is an “atrocity” as first lady: “She makes a fool of herself — every time she comes on TV, I have to turn it off. Laura Bush was so classy, and that’s what we really need again.” (Laurie Boilard, quoted by Bloomberg Politics at a party for a Republican candidate’s wife)

13. She dared to talk about the enslaved people who built the White House.

14. She is an “ape in heels.” (Pamela Ramsey Taylor, director of Clay County Development Corp., Clay, W.Va., who later swore she was not racist.)
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15. She has a “gorilla face.” (Patrick Rushing, mayor of Airway Heights, Wash.)

16. She is a “poor gorilla” who “needs to focus on getting a total makeover (especially the hair), instead of planning vacations.” (Georgia schoolteacher Jane Wood Allen)

17. She put her left elbow on a table once. (Salon)

18. She ” ‘voluntarily surrendered’ her law license in 1993. after a Federal Judge gave her the choice between surrendering her license or standing trial for Insurance fraud!” (Chain email)

19. She went “to Buckingham Palace in a sweater.” (Oscar de la Renta)

20. She’s President Obama’s “baby mama.” (Fox News)

21. She wore shorts.

22. She expressed some mixed feelings about being proud of America as a black woman, which was obviously unpatriotic. 

 

 

 

 

Actor Edward Norton used his platform to speak out against Donald Trump and the terror campaign ICE has unleashed on the entire country, even going so far as to fully back calls for a general strike to put the nation’s capital owners on notice about who really has the power in America. Rick Strom breaks it down.

 

 

 

Radical Right Wing Republican prove what Hypocrites they are by forbidding anyone to say anything negative about Charlie Kirk after he was murdered, but condon Trump, Kristi Noem and Steven Miller lying and slandering protestors who were MURDERED by ICE, such as Alex Pretty and Renee Good.

 

 

Megyn Kelly Proves she’s a heartless idiot and a POS by admitting she doesn’t care that ICE goons MURDERED Alex Pretty and Renee Good.

 

Radical Right Wing Republican Despot Hypocrites like Kelly said anyone who express glee or said anything negative about the killing of Charlie Kirk, deserved to Arrested and Deported.

 

 

Video proves Alex Pretti was MURDERED execution style by an ICE THUG shooter while Kristi Noem proves she is a lying, lawless BITCH by slandering the victim, making provability FALSE statements about the events which led to his murder

Outrage over the murder of another United States citizen by ICE Nazi Fascist Goons.

Alex Pretti was described by the government as approaching federal agents with a handgun when he was shot dead. But the video released since the incident shows Pretti with his hands empty when interacting with officers. Fmr. NYPD Lt. Darrin Porcher says in “no way, shape, or form,” does Pretti approach officers with any sort of threat.

 

This video by Jake Trapped proves Alex Pretti was MURDERED, execution style by the ICE THUG shooter and Kristi Noem is a lying, lawless BITCH

 

Pretti shooting witness describes everything she saw

 

RyanMatta 🇺🇸 🦅 on X (formerly Twitter): “Veteran’s are calling out the Trump administration for trying to smear Alex Pretti reputation. pic.twitter.com/MannhNAOCZ / X”

Veteran’s are calling out the Trump administration for trying to smear Alex Pretti reputation. pic.twitter.com/MannhNAOCZ

Veteran’s are calling out the Trump administration for trying to smear Alex Pretti reputation.

 

Trump faces bipartisan political backlash over WH response to deadly shooting

 

 

 

 

 

John Fetterman Proves to be a WACKO & Enemy of Democrats who sold out to Republicans & Trump

Fetterman’s former progressive backer says he ‘sold us out,’ escalates efforts to primary Democrat senator

 

IDIOT Fetterman says Democrats have ‘forgotten why we lost’ and Trump is ‘not an autocrat’

Goes to show how STUPID and what an IDIOT Fetterman is because Democrats didn’t lose.. Trump RIGGED the election with the help of Elon Musk. Both ADMITTED the election was rigged.

 

 

John Fetterman Just Endangered The Entire World

Senator John Fetterman joined nearly every Senate Republican to block a war powers resolution that would have forced the removal of U.S. forces from the conflict with Iran. The vote has sparked backlash from anti-war groups and Democrats who say Congress is allowing Trump to continue the war without authorization.

 

John Fetterman has proven to be an IDIOT who behaves more like a MAGA Moron Republican than a Democrat and should be REMOVED from the Democrat Party. The way he looks and dresses is an embarrassment and inappropriate for the office he holds