With over 15 million Twitter accounts voting, the verdict is in: 51.8% of those who took the 24-hour poll posted by Twitter owner Elon Musk said former President Donald Trump should be reinstated in that social media universe.
Musk ordered it so, saying, “The people have spoken.”
Over 134 million Twitter account owners saw the poll, with 15,085,458 taking part in voting either “yes” or “no” to the statement: “Reinstate former President Trump,” according to Musk.
Trump’s last comment on Twitter before the former CEO banned him for life was on Jan. 8, 2021: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” He was banned for glorifying violence in a pair of tweets:
Trump’s final messages on Twitter before he was banned.
Trump on Feb. 22, 2021 launched his own social media company, TruthSocial, which is populated by Trump-supporting conservatives and others. He remarked on Friday that he encouraged people to vote yes on the Twitter poll, but would continue to run the TruthSocial site.
“Vote now with positivity, but don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special,” he wrote on TruthSocial. TruthSocial had about 1.9 unique users in September of 2022.
On Saturday, in an address to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump said, “I don’t see any reason for it,” responding to the question of whether he would return to Twitter, where he has an audience that reached 90 million people directly or through retweets.
Trump this week announced he will run for president in 2024. Three days later, the Biden Administration’s Attorney General appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump and his involvement in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when protesters entered the U.S. Capitol and were unruly and posed a danger to lawmakers, as they tried to disrupt the finalization of the 2020 election that brought Joe Biden into the White House. That investigation is destined to hound Trump throughout the campaign and could widen to other scandals.
Musk and Trump have had a rocky relationship, mainly because the former president can be thin-skinned and Musk doesn’t care what Trump thinks. In July, Musk wrote that Trump should “sail away into the sunset.”
Musk also said, “I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy. He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”
Trump, in turn, has called Musk a “bullshit artist.”
Early in Trump’s presidency, he appointed Musk to two economic advisory councils. Then, after Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, Musk resigned from them.
“Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world,” Musk said in a tweet on June 1, 2017.
A plane registered to Copper Mountain Aviation in Anchorage that was testing out a new cargo modification crashed and burned in Snohomish County, Washington on Friday morning. A wing appeared to have come off the plane and landed at a distance from the main fiery crash. The plane crash killed two four people onboard.
The crash occurred just before 10:30 a.m. Pacific time in a field near State Route 2 and Westwick Road. The aircraft was a 2021 Cessna 208B Caravan, tail number N2069B, that had left the Renton Municipal Airport and had been flying around eastern Snohomish County for about an hour. Observers said it was doing slow-speed maneuvers and accelerated stalls before the wings fell off. The plane was manufactured by Textron Aviation.
Investigators from the National Transportation and Safety Board will investigate.
Copper Mountain Aviation is owned by the same people who own Lake and Pen Airlines. An earlier version of this story mistakenly said the plane was registered to Lake and Penn Aviation.
According to the FAA, the plane is registered to Copper Mountain Aviation LLC of Anchorage and flies out of Merrill Field in Anchorage.
FTX was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world until it collapsed on Nov. 11. Various online claims have been made that Ukraine invested in the crypto-scam company FTX, whose CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has spent tens of millions of what appear to be skimmed funds to support Democrat candidates and their like-minded political action committees during the 2022 election cycle.
Some of Bankman-Fried’s money went to Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaign and the Alaska Democratic Party, and some was funneled to the effort to elect dozens of Democrat candidates around the country, including Congresswoman Mary Peltola through the House Majority PAC.
The biggest campaign spending by Bankman-Fried was $27 million to a Democratic political action committee called Protect Our Future.
Now, a group of House Republicans is asking Secretary of State Antony Blinken to come clean on whether that money was laundered through Ukraine and if U.S. taxpayer aid sent to Ukraine was then funneled into investments in the now-bankrupt FTX. If so, that could mean that taxpayer funds were shuffled around to ultimately support Democrats running for office this year. Bankman-Fried spent nearly $40 million on the 2022 midterms, money that was taken from his cryptocurrency subsidiaries before he declared FTX bankrupt.
The Associated Press and Time Magazine assure readers that no such proof exists that U.S. aid dollars were invested in FTX. But there have been significant investments through the cryptocurrency world in the war between Ukraine and Russia, and it’s provable that money has gone at least one way. What has not been proved is whether Ukraine then invested in FTX as a sort of quid pro quo.
The Associated Press wrote that the claim that U.S. aid to Ukraine was laundered back to the Democratic Party though FTX is false.
“The Ukrainian government has not invested nor stored money in FTX, according to the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation. These claims misrepresent a short-term initiative in Ukraine that used FTX to convert cryptocurrency donations for the war effort into government-issued currency. While FTX’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has donated large sums to Democrats, records show he and other FTX executives also have donated to conservative groups,” the Associated Press wrote on Thursday.
The amounts donated to conservative groups by Bankman-Fried is minor, and includes the campaigns of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Mitt Romney — not senators that some would consider conservative.
Read the Associated Press‘ full report on the matter at this link.
But news agencies and fact-check websites are only disputing the allegations based on the word of Ukrainian government officials.
Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Indexhas Russia at the top of the list, as the most corrupt country in Europe, followed by Ukraine. Ukraine is ranked 122nd out of 180 countries for corruption. Its officials being the basis for a claim of “false” may not be good enough for many Americans.
There is an absolutely established link between FTX and the war in Ukraine. It involves a Ukrainian website called Aid For Ukraine.
In March of 2021, Aid For Ukraine was launched to raise money from the crypto community for the benefit of “Ukraine’s military and humanitarian needs.” The initiative is powered by the Ukrainian government’s Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, FTX, and Everstake, the largest decentralized staking provider in the blockchain industry. This is the first instance of a cryptocurrency exchange providing a conduit for crypto donations to a public financial institution, the announcement noted.
Must Read Alaska is not linking the related websites in this scandal due to the possibility of bad actors. The link here goes to PRNewswire’s announcement of the Aid for Ukraine project. The link to the actual Aid for Ukraine website goes to a Ukrainian government website:
The link to Aid for Ukraine (there are other sites with the same name but with a slightly different URL top level domain) goes to a Ukrainian government website. The project was launched with FTX, Digital Transformation of Ukraine, and Everstake, a digital ledger company.
Fox Business news outlet reported on Friday it had acquired the letter written by several Republican House Representatives to U.S. Secretary of State Blinken regarding their concerns that some of the $66 billion in U.S. aid sent to Ukraine has been redirected to the Democratic party through FTX.
The letter was signed by Reps. Troy Nehls and Louie Gohmert of Texas, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, and Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois, according to Fox. The letter is not posted online, but the Representatives stated “it has come to their attention that billions of taxpayer dollars sent to Ukraine to assist with their war efforts were potentially invested in a crypto exchange that then made massive donations to Democrats” during the past midterm elections, according to Fox.
FTX collapsed when investors discovered it was a Potemkin village that was completely fraudulent, and was exposed as not having enough assets to redeem client withdrawals, which created a three-day “run” on the cryptocurrency exchange, leading to FTX filing for Bankruptcy on Nov. 11.
FTX founder and the No. 2 donor to the Democratic Party Bankman-Fried now faces criminal investigations in the Bahamas, where the exchange was headquartered and where he is holed up.
Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter in October, posted a poll on Friday, asking the Twitter universe if former President Donald Trump should be allowed back on the social media platform. With less than seven hours left in the poll, as of this writing, over 12 million Twitter users have voted, and Trump is winning with these voters, 52.4% to 47.6%.
Twitter users have, in the past, leaned left, and it is the social media place where journalists and politicos have hung out and chatted nonstop.
“U.S. adult Twitter users are younger and more likely to be Democrats than the general public. Most users rarely tweet, but the most prolific 10% create 80% of tweets from adult U.S. users,” reported the Pew Research Centerin 2019. At least some of those journalists and leftist activists say they have left the social media site and taken up social media residency at Mastodon, a new social media company that some people find clunky and hard to use. Those leftists and journalists have predicted Twitter will fail without them, but the Musk poll shows vibrancy and diversity of opinion.
The former overseers of Twitter put a damper on conservative voices by shadow-banning them, which means the system down-ranked them so that few people would see their comments. The former owners blocked Trump’s account on Jan. 8, 2021, writing on the Twitter blog, “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
The permanent ban of Trump came two days after a surge of protesters went into the U.S. Capitol, causing a delay of the certification of the Electoral College vote that completed the 2020 election of Joe Biden to the presidency.
On the Twitter blog on Jan. 8, 2021, the company justified the ban:
“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open,” Twitter wrote.
“However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement,” Twitter wrote.
The tweets that were the final straw for Twitter were posted by Trump on Jan. 8, 2021:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Shortly thereafter, Trump tweeted:
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Twitter decided those comments had to be viewed as inciting violence: “Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.”
Twitter went on to say that under its glorification of violence policy, the comments “could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
In the 9 pm Friday update from the Division of Elections, Sen. Lisa Murkowski has pulled ahead of Kelly Tshibaka in the first round of counting for the U.S. Senate race. Result can be viewed at this link.
Sen. Murkowski now sits with 43.32% of the vote. That means 56.68% of Alaska voters chose someone else on the first round of counting.
Murkowski’s current result is more than a percent less than what voters gave her in 2016, when she won with 44.4% of the vote.
In 2010, Murkowski won with 39.5% of the vote. Murkowski has been Alaska’s U.S. senator since appointed by her father in 2002. She won with 48.6% in 2004, her first statewide election, which was the best she has ever done with Alaska voters.
This time, however, with ranked choice voting, she will get another bite of the apple. The second-choice votes from voters are calculated by the Division of Elections on Nov. 23, and Murkowski is expected to pick up most of Democrat Pat Chesbro’s voters’ second choice to reach over 50%, which is what is needed to win in the ranked-choice system that was designed by her supporters to ensure her win this year.
Compared to her win in 2016, this year Murkowski is far behind in first-place votes. In 2016, she received 138,149 votes, with Libertarian Joe Miller receiving 90,825, no-party candidate Margaret Stock getting 41,194 and Democrat Ray Metcalf pulling in 36,200.
This year, Democrat Pat Chesbro has gotten 9,326 less votes than Democrat Ray Metcalfe received in 2016, when he got 11% of the vote. Chesbro now is at 10.35%.
The 2022 general election results will be final on Nov. 23, and the election is set to be certified on Nov. 29.
Senate race
Murkowski 112,519, 43.32%
Tshibaka 110,861, 42.68%
Chesbro 26,874, 10.35%
Kelley 7,484, 2.88%
House race
Peltola 127,364, 48.68%
Palin 67,485, 25.79%
Begich 61,179, 23.38%
Bye 4,521, 1.73%
Governor race
Dunleavy/Dahlstrom 131,770, 50.34%
Gara/Cook 63,284, 24.17%
Walker/Drygas 54,230, 20.72%
Pierce/Grunwald 11,723, 4.48%
In state Senate races, Anchorage Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar, running for Senate Seat J, has exceeded the 50%+1 threshold in his east Anchorage district, fending off two other contestants, including Rep. Geran Tarr, and avoiding having to go into the runoff round of counting, via the ranked-choice voting method now in use in Alaska.
Dunbar 4,278, 50.02%
Satterfield 2,800, 32.74%
Tarr 1,432, 16.74%
In House races, Rep. Neal Foster of District 39 (Nome) has surged past challenger Tyler Ivanoff of Shishmaref, to an insurmountable win for that area, with 1,834, or over 51.19%. For several days the two were with 10 votes of each other and as of Friday, Foster was just three votes ahead, but later on Friday a surprising number of votes have been added to his total. Ivanoff has 1,726 votes, 48.17%.
Democrat Rep. Andy Josephson in Anchorage has gained even more in the absentee and early votes, and is now at 52.42% over Republican challenger Kathy Henslee, 47.44%. It appears he has won another term in office.
The latest release of ballot counts from late Friday night includes Region IV — All House district absentee (all counts) received through Thursday and early votes cast in the Region IV office. Also, HD 1 and 3-6 (all counts) through Nov. 15, HD 2 (all counts) through Nov. 17, questioned HD 2 and 5 (all counts) early votes from Region I early voting locations.
This report updates an earlier report from Friday mid-day.
It was cloudy in Utqiagvik on Friday, but the sun came up and went down 58 minutes later, not to be seen again for 65 days. The sun rose at 12:42 pm and set at 1:41 pm, and will next rise on Jan. 23.
Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, is the furthest north town in the United States. It is situated at 71.2906° N, and 156.7886° W.
The temperature reached 32 degrees on Friday and will be in the low-20s at night and the Arctic Ocean is still unfrozen. It is in House District 40, represented by Rep. Josiah Patkotak, and Sen. Donny Olson.
The Division of Elections released another batch of election results from the Nov. 8 election. This batch, including many from the Fairbanks area, shows Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka has pulled slightly ahead of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, 104,898 to 104,470. That’s 43.28%-43.11%, advantage Tshibaka, but Murkowski is expected to win when the final tabulation is done on Tuesday, as she will pick up most of Democrat Pat Chesbro’s 24,377 second-choice votes.
In the House race, Congresswoman Mary Peltola, a Democrat, now has 117,686 votes, having gained another 1,364 since the last batch count on Wednesday, with Sarah Palin coming in second with 63,608, and Nick Begich third with 57,900 votes. Only if Begich voters marked Palin second
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has maintained his lead of 124,610 to Democrat Les Gara’s 58,273, and former Gov. Bill Walker is at 50,018. It appears Gara and Walker have no viable way to catch Dunleavy, who is still at nearly 51% of the first-choice vote.
Today’s count includes House District 31-36 absentee ballots received through Nov 17 (all counts), House District 36 questioned ballots (all counts), early vote ballots cast at the Region III (Fairbanks) early voting location (including ballots from other regions).
In House District 39, the Nome area and north, Democrat Rep. Neal Foster is ahead of Alaskan Independence Party Tyler Ivanoff of Shishmaref by just three votes. This one will likely go to a recount and shows some level of dissatisfaction with Foster in an area he has represented since Nov. 15, 2009, after the death of his father, Rep. Richard Foster.
In Anchorage, Rep. Matt Claman is maintaining a strong enough lead over Sen. Mia Costello to take that seat, 7,469 to 6,958.
Costello wrote her concession statement on social media:
“While the votes were close after the first count, the latest count of ballots in my race now has a clear result: my opponent has a lead that is numerically insurmountable. I wish him the best as he prepares to serve as West Anchorage’s next State Senator,” she wrote.
“When I first decided to run for public office, I knew I wanted to serve to help keep our neighborhoods safe for our families, and our economy strong with exciting new opportunities. I pledged to work to keep West Anchorage an amazing place to raise my kids, just as it was an incredible place for me to grow up. And I promised that any Alaskan who came to me with a problem would find an open door, a listening ear, and a grateful servant wanting to help. I worked hard to keep that promise, and I sincerely hope I have,” Costello wrote.
“It has been my great honor to serve you in the Alaska Senate for the last eight years and in the State House for four years before that. I’m profoundly grateful for the trust you’ve shown me. And while my role will change, I’ll still work to keep that promise in the role that has always mattered the most — as your neighbor Mia.
“Thank you so much, and God bless,” Sen. Costello wrote. Claman is a Democrat who has flipped the Republican seat and all-but ensured a coalition caucus between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate.
Many of us fighting for judicial reform in Alaska were disappointed by the result of the constitutional convention vote (Ballot Measure 1). Our efforts didn’t go to waste. We established some very important truths to build on.
The political bias of our judicial council system was exposed. Older Supreme Court rulings that defied our Constitution were brought back into focus. Numerous voters throughout the state expressed their disgust with our rogue judges.
We traced a whopping $4.4 million opposing judicial reform back to leftist organizations in Washington, D.C. We heard the hypocrisy of this dark money, scaring us into a “No” vote by the fear of …. dark money. We recognized the need to become better organized.
We learned the “bipartisan support” touted by Defend Our Constitution is very fragile. Questions asked of some entities regarding the appropriateness of their endorsement of Defend Our Constitution went answered. We drew our opposition into the spotlight of truth and now they have nowhere to hide.
Our next opportunity for judicial reform is to push for a constitutional amendment originating in the Legislature this winter. We will be most effective mobilizing now.
A critical truth was revealed to the public on Oct. 29 by former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman during a constitutional convention debate hosted by Alaska Public Media. Leman focused our attention on a candid admission said to him over 30 years ago by a Democrat leader in the State House – that the Democrat Party will always control Alaska’s courts because of the way we select judges.
Another important truth was revealed to the public on Oct. 27 by former Sen. John Coghill, one of the Defend Our Constitution co-chairs, during his debate with Bob Bird on the Talk of the Kenai radio show.
In response to Bird’s assertion that the Alaska Judicial Council is damaging justice, Coghill admitted “it is true”, adding it is “too much like a cartel.” His labeling the council a “cartel” was no accidental slip of the tongue. Coghill not only repeated the word, but he concluded by saying if the Alaska people want to change the way we select judges, he’s with us.
These truths should outrage every Alaskan legislator, whether Republican, Democrat, or independent. A cornerstone of any healthy democracy is a judiciary free from political persuasion. Judges are required to rule on the law and the facts before them, nothing else. They are required to suppress their own political views to uphold the law. There’s no room for any reasonable debate on this issue.
The American College of Trial Lawyers puts it like this: “The concept of judicial independence, that judges should decide cases, faithful to the law, without ‘fear or favor’ and free from political or external pressures, remains one of the fundamental cornerstones of our political and legal systems, both federal and state.”
The fact we have a cartel controlled by the Democrat Party running our judiciary should offend every Alaskan who believes in democracy.
Every legislator associated with the Democrat Party should be thoroughly embarrassed. They should make it their top priority to cooperate with their Republican and Independent colleagues to rid ourselves of this partisan judiciary holding themselves above our Constitution.
Alaskan citizens should accept nothing short of the following results in the first few months of the upcoming legislative session, by unanimous vote:
1) Per Article XIII, Section 1, a proposed constitutional amendment to change our system of selecting judges, which is then brought to the people for ratification at the next general election;
2) Per Article IV, Section 15, changes to court rules necessary to unwind the damage done by our partisan judiciary for the last 35 years, starting with their outrageous decision to suppress grand jury reports through unconstitutional Criminal Rule 6.1; and
3) Making reparations to citizens harmed by this partisan political parade, starting with Thomas Jack, Jr. of Hoonah, an innocent person who has been incarcerated the last 12 years because of judicial shenanigans.
In the coming weeks, we can better inform voters and legislators by further exposing judicial lawlessness. Batting first is Bess v. Ulmer, a horribly flawed decision in 1999 by our non-elected, partisan Supreme Court judges who elevated themselves above the law. They shredded the intent of our founders and illegally prevented our elected Legislature from proposing Constitutional amendments to the people.
Batting second is Supreme Court Order 938 adopting Criminal Rule 6.1 to suppress grand jury reports detailing government misconduct, and their subsequent holding in O’Leary v. Superior Court. Batting third is our judiciary’s blessing of multiple violations of the Constitution and ethical rules in Thomas Jack’s wrongful conviction.
Let’s get to work ridding ourselves of our partisan Alaska Judicial Council and their outlaw judges. Let’s organize to restore a healthy democracy and compel our legislators to act appropriately.
David Ignell is a forensic journalist, at www.poweredbyjustice.com, where he promotes public advocacy and justice for all Alaskans.
Three days after former President Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency for 2024, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate two criminal complaints against Trump.
Jack Smith, a veteran federal prosecutor, has been named special counsel. He will dig into whether Trump or a Trump surrogate unlawfully interfered with the certification of the Electoral College on Jan. 6, 2021, obstructing the peaceful transfer of power. The second area of investigation is whether Trump broke the law or obstructed justice by removing hundreds of documents from the White House, having them shipped to his residence at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
The investigation will expose the entire Trump cabinet and many close family members and associates to federal depositions.
Smith is the former head of the Justice Department’s public integrity division. He made the following statement on the Justice Department’s website:
“I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice. The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgement and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”
The announcement also came one day after the House had official flipped to Republican control, which effectively ends the work of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which has worked for nearly two years to bring those to justice who invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. House members have made it known they intend to open up investigations into the criminal links between Hunter Biden and his father, President Biden.
On Fox News, Trump responded: I have been going through this for six years, for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it anymore,” Trump told Fox News. “And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this.”
Attorney General Garland, in a press conference, said, the probe, “as described in court filings in the District of Columbia, is the investigation into whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about Jan. 6, 2021.
“The second is the ongoing investigation involving classified documents and other presidential records, as well as the possible obstruction of that investigation, referenced and described in court filings in a pending matter in the Southern District of Florida.”
Based on recent developments, “including the former president’s announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election, and the sitting president’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said. “Such an appointment underscores the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters. It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously, and to make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”
The investigations are separate from other prosecutions going on in the District of Columbia courts that pertain to people who were inside the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. Those investigations and prosecutions will remain under the authority of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
