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Showing posts with label Gregg Phillips. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

If He Has The Names Of The Illegal Voters, Let's See Them

Presumed source of Trump’s election-fraud data says he might publish names of illegal voters online

Sarah Lee 2 hours

Voters line up to cast their ballots on Super Tuesday March 1, 2016 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)

The supposed source for President Donald Trump’s claim that 3 million to 5 million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election has announced that he may release the names of those voters.

“If I had my druthers, and they said, ‘Gregg, you can release your list or you can give it to [the Department of Justice],’ I’d instantly agree to give it over to DOJ. They could bump it up against the Homeland Security file,” Gregg Phillips told the Daily Beast on Tuesday. “There’s a group of us who don’t think we should release the names at all.”

Phillips said that, as of now, releasing the names is what he intends to do.

Phillips, a former Texas Health and Human Services Commission deputy commissioner, gained attention in November when he tweeted that he had proof that 3 million votes were cast illegally. President Donald Trump has since used Phillips’ claim as evidence for his allegations of a skewed popular vote count.

Now Phillips, on the heels of Trump once again touting voter fraud and calling for an investigation, says he may make the names of those illegal voters public by publishing them online. But there’s a hitch — according to the Daily Beast, no one has seen the data but Phillips himself.

That “evidence” could include the data Phillips claimed to have a week after the election, which gained legendary viral notoriety on the right. The Washington Post‘s Philip Bump called Phillips’ tweet “Donald Trump’s new explanation for losing the popular vote” back in November.

Here’s the problem: No one has seen any of the data, nor the algorithm Phillips and his group have put it through, let alone confirmed if it’s even possible for any part of it to be true.

When the election results were finally tallied, Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes. Green Party candidate Jill Stein soon thereafter began a doomed effort to recount votes in battleground states in an ostensible attempt to prove Clinton’s popularity with the American voters and to draw attention to problems with the Electoral College system.

Phillips’ tweet came a day after the official popular vote count was confirmed but before Stein launched her recount effort. His tweet sent Trump on a multi-week quest to bring the notion of illegal votes out into the open, culminating Wednesday with his call for an investigation.

According to the Daily Beast, Trump’s recent claims of “3-to-5 million” illegal voters seems to match with Phillips’ original estimates:

That matches up nearly with Phillips’s November claim to “have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens,” adding that “we are joining .@TrueTheVote to initiate legal action.#unrigged.”

His two tweets on the subject quickly went viral on far-right-wing and conspiracy sites, racking up over 10,000 retweets. An InfoWars story based on his tweet reached the top of right-wing news aggregator The Drudge Report, which in July had more than a billion readers.

Phillips said he intends to release all of the information he has gathered to back his claim, including the analysis and full data set. He did not, however, provide a time frame or share the data set or algorithm used to establish voter fraud with the Daily Beast. He indicated that part of the delay is a desire to conduct an “internal audit” to avoid erroneously charging someone with “felony voter fraud.”

“I committed from the outset to publish all of this data to the public. I’m gonna let the public see everything we’ve done. Our analysis, everything, will be published. We will also give copies to the federal government,” Phillips told the Daily Beast.

The data set his group is working with came from True the Vote, according to Phillips. True the Vote is associated with the Tea Party group King Street Patriots. Both King Street Patriots and True the Vote were founded by Texas Republican organizer Catherine Engelbrecht, who was one of the individuals associated with Tea Party groups the IRS targeted under President Barack Obama.

Engelbrecht told the Daily Beast that she’s “confident the president has data to support his contentions” but added that the president is not citing True the Vote’s data nor Phillips’ data.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Where Can We Get It?

Trump Reveals New Hat That Shows Where He Stands On Recount Efforts

... traded in his trademark "Make America Great Again" cap ...

by Jeff Neukom November 28, 2016 at 10:52am

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On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump not-so-subtly reminded everyone of his looming inauguration as 45th president of the United States, unveiling a new baseball cap on his way back from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The real estate mogul traded in his trademark “Make America Great Again” cap while keeping the signature and eye-catching red. The new hat had “45” on the side and the front was emblazoned “USA” in white stitching.

Trump popularized the MAGA cap early in his campaign, and it was widely embraced by his supporters, who have often sported the cap in force at his rallies. They also proved an impressive financial boon to his campaign.

The hats usually sell for $25 to $30 on his website, and are available in a variety of colors.

While remarkably popular with Trump’s supporters, the hats have drawn their share of criticism.

In October, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s campaign spent more on said hats than on polling, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

The Associated Press also explored claims that some of the hats were not made in the United States.

Trump proudly proclaimed his hats to be “Made in the USA” as part of his campaign’s focus on bolstering American-made products.

His campaign responded to social media posts alleging that his hats were made in China, pointing out that unofficial knock-offs of Trump hats, made in China and not endorsed by Trump’s campaign, were also widely available.

It is not yet clear if Trump’s new “45” cap is exclusive to him or if it will be made available for general sale. In either case, the hat seems a silent response to those calling for a recount, including Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Trump has also issued a flurry of tweets responding to the controversy, alleging that he would have won the popular vote if it was adjusted to remove votes from illegal immigrants.

His claim, immediately contested by pundits, stemmed from estimates by Gregg Phillips of VoteStand that at least 3 million illegal immigrants cast ballots.

The president-elect also took advantage of an opportunity to turn former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s words against her.

During her campaign, Clinton famously criticized Trump, saying that not accepting the results of the popular election would be a “threat to democracy.”

While Stein has managed to raise $5 million in an effort to elicit a recount, Trump’s newest hat makes his stance on the issue quite clear.

What do you think?