This is another attempt to ruin public education and to instead indoctrinate kids / students with “American Exceptionalism” and conservative right wing views. There is a reason teaching is a profession, it has professional ethics and standards. This is why parents should not be setting curriculums and alternate history. This is why a lot of religious schools are unaccredited, they do not teach legitimate subject material that is required for a child to move to higher education, and to pass basic education tests. This is part of DeathSantis attack on schools and education, this is part of the don’t say gay and no CRT/ teaching accurate history including no sexual education while insisting teachers teach that the US was founded to be a Christian nation. If you think this is just a Florida problem remember DeathSantis is the front runner now for the republican nomination for president in 2024, and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars far out fund raising any other republican candidate. He is what the right wing wants for their king. Hugs
Gov. Ron DeSantis is vowing to “keep plowing forward” with plans to allow military veterans to teach in Florida classrooms, suggesting Wednesday that vets may be better suited to teaching than an education major.
“You give me somebody who has four years of experience as a Devil Dog over somebody who has four years of experience at Shoehorn U and I will take the Marine every day of the week and twice on Sunday,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Brevard County.
DeSantis made the comments defending a Senate bill last year that allowed for an alternative pathway to teaching certification for military veterans.
Just another huge block of voters, teachers, he is turning further against himself. They say if gays are five per cent of the population in Florida and they turn out , they can decide the election against Ron. Let’s all take him down
Keep in mind that Ron Desantis graduated from both Harvard Law and Yale. His children certainly won’t be taught by ill-equipped veterans rather than qualified school teachers.
This asshole went to Harvard. He knows active duty military can’t and shouldn’t teach Algebra or “Where The Red Fern Grows.” The point is to break public teachers unions and bleed public school money into the private sector. His “golly-shucks” populism is as cynical as the greed behind it is evil. He must really think his supporters are idiots. Or, at least, he’s counting on it.
…and Yale undergrad. He’s not stupid, notice how of all the red meat GQP issues, the one he won’t go near is abortion restrictions,? Last night in KS showed why. I hope he challenges the the biggest loser in the primaries. In the worst case scenario I suppose he’d be better than the orange malignancy, he does not inspire the cult the way Jim Jones Trump does.
Correct, he’s playing the same game all the Republicans do and just like them, not a single person calls him out on this shit.
No FL Dems goes online to point this fact out, hell not even a Biden admin Dept of Ed mentions it, he’s just spewing the same GOP talking points, uncorrected.
A good campaign policy, a horrible policy to implement. Of all the movies I’ve watched over the decades that have attempted to predict the future, I believe Idiocracy is the most likely to have nailed it.
This is a big reason why DeathSantis is becoming more popular than Trump in certain demographics.
Lazy anti-intellectualism along with religious bigotry, casuistry and sophistry are replacing logic, skepticism and relevance as critical thinking skills. If you own a cell phone then you are smarter than Einstein and the hatedlibs, so why bother reading shit?
I know there are some military vets teaching in schools, so I’m sure he’ll have his schools’ military vets screened for mental health issues, right? Regardless, what happens if one or more of those military vets who have mild to severe PTSD due to being in combat situs suddenly freaks out because of some loud noise, or children screaming/crying, or the classroom bell going off? What happens if said vet gets triggered and suddenly starts reenacting a traumatizing event? What happens if the vet starts treating the children like POWs?
Will these veterans know how to teach different kinds of learners? Would you have veterans do brain surgery? Teachers are professionals. Republicans are determined to dumb down the population and devalue education, and actual qualifications.
These Rethugs are deliberately trying to destroy public education.
Imagine some enlisted dink, absent any education training, qualifications, experience or certification whatsoever, trying to teach little kids how to read phonetically, or more advanced students history or civics or algebra, or high schoolers literature, chemistry, or physics.
Of course the point isn’t that they’ll be taught. They won’t be. They’ll “graduate” not knowing much of anything and thus be ineligible to seek college education.
A bunch of ignorant proles is all they’ll be. By design.
I wonder how the parents are going to like it. And this also answers George W Bush’s infamous question, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
I’m a veteran, this is a really stupid idea. Children aren’t soldiers, and shouldn’t be taught by those whose only qualification is that they were soldiers.
“4. 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.”
Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism By Dr. Lawrence Britt
“We have a real treat for you today kids. We’re going to watch a movie called full Metal Jacket and shows you how to manage the nerds and misfits trying to infiltrate your classroom”
The GOP gonna eat that shit up come 2024 and if we aint careful so will a lot of so called “independents” who are just fucking GOP and ashamed to say it out loud. Lets see if the teachers will be able to push back at all on this. He is basically telling them they are useless so they either agree with him that they are ill suited to teach or they dont. Will be telling to see how many stick with desantis after this
Dave Wasserman: “I’ve seen enough: in a huge victory for the pro-choice side, the Kansas constitutional amendment to remove protections of abortion rights fails.”
Time and time, over and over, Republicans will believe less and less in reality in order to protect the egos of their grossly corrupt strong men.
Pro Lifer: Well the mother should just give the baby up for adoption if she doesn’t want the baby
Me: So who will adopt the baby?
PL: I don’t know there’s lots of couples who want to adopt
Me: Do you know any couple who is waiting to adopt?
PL: Um well not personally but like I know there’s lots of people waiting to adopt.
Me: Do you know what a domestic adoption costs?
PL: I don’t know. $15,000 maybe?
Me: The average cost of domestic adoption in the United States is $70,000 if you go through a private agency.
PL: Oh I didn’t realize it was that much
Me: Yep it’s really expensive. It can be more if you want a newborn straight from the hospital. Up to $120,000.
PL: Well all life is precious.
Me: it really is. I’ve adopted through foster care and am currently a licensed foster parent. Would you be interested in becoming a foster parent yourself?
PL: Oh no I couldn’t do it.
Me: Why not?
PL: It would just be too much for me right now.
Me: Why is that?
PL: It would be too hard to handle all the issues that came with it. I’ve heard horror stories.
Me: Yep it can be extremely difficult. But what if I told you that you were required by law to become a foster parent?
PL: what?
Me: what if you had to become a foster parent by law?
PL: they would never do that. That would never happen.
Me: Well, if a woman is forced to bear a child she doesn’t want, and she goes ahead and has that child, someone has to care for the child either through adoption or foster care. You have to do one of those two things.
PL: But I don’t want any more kids.
Me: So you don’t want someone forcing you to have a child in your home that you don’t want or aren’t able to care for?
PL: no, that’s not my job to raise someone else’s child.
There it is, folks. Have the baby, but we don’t want anything to do with it afterwards.
Please notice how the church people disregarded or disobeyed the parent of these kids. Horrible abuse in the name of religion. Being gay is not a disease to be cured, it is a inborn condition that can not be changed, and the attempt is torture against those it is done to. Hugs
CBC News has learned police, Crown investigating complaints from 18 Christian Centre Academy students
Sean Kotelmach, Coy Nolin, Caitlin Erickson, Cody Nolin and 14 other former students of Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, allege they were subjected to exorcism, violent discipline and other abuse there. (Travis Reddaway/CBC)
Coy Nolin and his mother say they had no idea the four people in their living room were about to conduct a violent exorcism to cast out Coy’s “gay demons.”
Coy says that three days earlier, in an office at Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy, the school’s director had interrogated him for several hours after informants told the director Coy is gay. Coy, who was 16 years old at the time, says the director called him “evil” and “an abomination.”
Coy was suspended and told they would try to “cure” him.
“He told me I’d have to take it like a man,” Coy said.
Coy and his mother, Carilyn, say they agreed to the home visit in May 2004 assuming they would discuss the suspension.
But almost immediately after they walked into the house, the four officials from the school and adjoining Saskatoon Christian Centre church placed their hands on Coy. They began yelling, grunting and making other unintelligible sounds known as “speaking in tongues.”
“I was no longer in control. I was pushed aside,” Carilyn said.
After more than an hour, with Carilyn crying in the corner of the room, they stopped.
Coy says the director then grabbed his large wooden paddle, bent Coy over his lap and spanked him hard enough to leave him bruised and limping.
“That was one of the worst days of my life. Even now, just thinking about it, I go numb,” Coy said.
“This was abuse. This was a hate crime.”
Coy Nolin says he’s still scarred by the abuse he suffered while attending Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, but he is now proud of his identity and finding ways to heal. (Travis Reddaway/CBC)
CBC News has learned Coy and 17 other former students have filed criminal abuse complaints. After a 12-month investigation, Saskatoon police handed the file to Crown prosecutors in April to consider possible charges, according to police emails to students. It’s unclear when the Crown will make a decision.
The complaints include frequent paddlings, many of which allegedly occurred after the Supreme Court of Canada outlawed corporal punishment by educators in early 2004.
There are also allegations of coercion, traumatizing rituals and solitary confinement.
Many of the former students — and some of their parents — have agreed to tell their stories publicly for the first time to CBC News. They shared diaries, police statements and other documentation.
They say the physical, financial, social and emotional control from school and church officials was absolute, and that it has taken years to regain their dignity and sanity. Some say they’re still struggling.
“It’s taken a long time for people to speak up. I mean, it was a cult. It was essentially a cult,” said Caitlin Erickson, the first student to come forward to police.
Caitlin Erickson was the first of 18 former students of Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, to go to police. She says the degree of control exerted by school and church officials was similar to a cult. (Travis Reddaway/CBC)
Officials with the adjacent Legacy Christian Academy — the name was changed from Christian Centre Academy (CCA) in 2013 — initially agreed to an interview and said they’d answer all questions. The next day, they emailed a written statement and declined to answer any further questions.
“We are grieved to learn of former students who feel they were subjected to abuse during their time at CCA. We encourage and support any former student who feels this way to file a report with the police so these matters can be investigated and dealt with properly and legally,” the statement said.
Many of the alleged incidents involved leaders and staff of both the school and adjoining Saskatoon Christian Centre, now known as Mile Two Church. The two institutions have long shared a building in Saskatoon’s Lawson Heights neighbourhood, and the school’s current handbook notes they are guided by the “doctrinal beliefs” of Mile Two Church such as the infallibility of the Bible.
Mile Two Church officials declined repeated interview requests.
Erickson and other students say they’re skeptical. They say some of the same people are still working at the school and church, and that there has been no effort to apologize or make amends.
“They simply changed the name. It’s just a rebranding,” Erickson said.
Manual details ‘scriptural discipline’
Christian Centre Academy opened its doors to students in 1982, but it didn’t receive provincial accreditation allowing students to enter university or college until 1994. Like other private schools, parents pay tuition and participate in fundraising. It has also been receiving Saskatchewan government funding for the past decade.
Most of the former students who’ve come forward attended between 1995 and 2010, but there is no time limit on legal complaints of this nature involving minors.
Students and experts interviewed say all government subsidies and tax breaks for the church and school must be halted until police and prosecutors have dealt with the complaints and the government has conducted a full investigation of the school’s current practices.
They agree some key staff have left, but the former principal and school director are now teaching at other Christian schools in Saskatchewan.
“Oh my god, this makes my stomach turn. How could this happen?” said University of Regina professor emerita Ailsa Watkinson, who was involved in the 2004 Supreme Court case to ban corporal punishment in schools.
“Religion was used to torment, to discriminate. It’s cruel. This is torture. Anyone with common sense knows this.”
CBC News has obtained an 85-page, eight-lesson manual called The Child Training Seminar, written by the father of the current pastor. Students say that, during their time at the school, it was sold in the gift shop along with bibles and a selection of hand-made wooden paddles of various sizes. Students say it was used by school staff and strongly recommended for parents.
More than 20 pages are devoted to the benefits and practical applications of “scriptural discipline.”
It states “ungodly” professors, researchers and psychologists who opposed corporal punishment are “influenced by the devil” and should be ignored.
“Sometimes, spanking will leave marks on the child. If some liberal were to hear this, they’d immediately charge us with advocating child-beating,” states the handbook.
It gives detailed instruction on the types of infractions that warrant paddling, such as riding a bicycle while “forbidden.”
“Have him bend over and apply the paddle firmly. Don’t permit any wiggling around or jumping around. Don’t allow any pre-discipline howling and sniveling. Don’t let his crying and begging diminish the severity of punishment,” the handbook says.
For parents, it states fathers are the head of the household and must ensure the discipline is unemotional and consistent. It warns against using verbal discipline and says “mothers need to particularly guard against this.”
It’s unclear whether any of the handbook remains in use. The current student handbook makes no mention of corporal punishment in its “forms of discipline” section.
‘I was so scared’: former student
Sean Kotelmach, who attended the school from 1996 to 2008, said he had difficulty keeping up with the largely self-directed curriculum, which relied heavily on memorization and obedience. In his frustration, he began to talk back.
“They made me think I was stupid,” he said.
Kotelmach said he endured a punishment akin to solitary confinement as a 13-year-old. He was forced to arrive at school 15 minutes before other students, work alone at a desk in a small, windowless room for the entire day, then leave 15 minutes after his classmates had departed. He said this continued for two weeks.
He said he was also paddled multiple times. Kotelmach said he and others would “pad” their buttocks with up to nine pairs of underwear to soften the blows. If discovered, the student would be forced to remove the underwear and punishment would increase.
“Every part of me wanted to walk to the police and simply pull down my pants and show them what was done to me,” Kotelmach said. “[But] I was scared. I was so scared. I worried my parents would get in trouble for sending me to that school.”
Sean Kotelmach says Christian Centre Academy officials employed forms of solitary confinement. As a 13-year-old, he was placed a small, windowless room with only a desk for 10 consecutive school days, prohibited from speaking to anyone. (Travis Reddaway/CBC)
Later in life, medical tests would reveal Kotelmach’s dyslexia. He’s now creative director for a local marketing and media company, but said the emotional scars remain.
Kotelmach said he found the courage to file a police report last year after speaking with Erickson.
“I was tired of living with rage. I wake up in the middle of the night screaming. That’s no way to live. I want it to stop. I needed to do my part and say something,” Kotelmach said.
‘Criminal law applies to all of us’: law professor
The former students say many of these incidents, including Coy Nolin’s exorcism and paddling, occurred after the Supreme Court ruling in 2004.
In the ruling, the court limited corporal punishment to parents, and only under narrow circumstances. It must be proportional, can only be done on children between the ages of two and 12, and no implements are allowed.
It banned all other officials from doing so, and specifically mentioned teachers and school officials.
Queen’s University law professor Lisa Kelly said any teacher paddling a student after Jan. 30, 2004, was clearly committing an assault.
“That applies in any school, public or private. Criminal law applies to all of us. It is crystal clear,” Kelly said.
Kelly said any corporal punishment before 2004 could also be a concern for police and prosecutors. She said spanking, paddling or strapping a child hard enough to leave marks has long been considered by judges as excessive force.
Caitlin Erickson shared a story about her and the rest of the senior girls’ volleyball team being accused of whispering during a weekend church service in the fall of 2003.
They say that the following Monday at school, they were lined up in the auditorium and yelled at by the director, the principal and their female coach.
One by one, they were taken into a side room where one of the two male staff paddled them, they say.
“It looked like a canoe oar,” said Christina Hutchinson, the team’s captain. “Adult men doing that to a bunch of teenaged girls? It was so cruel. They were all crying, but I was so angry I didn’t cry.”
Like Erickson, Hutchinson said the school and church operated like a cult.
“Everything is based on constant fear — fear of being paddled, fear of going to hell,” she said.
They say most girls ended up with marks and bruises on their buttocks that spread as far as the back of their knees.
“I remember a week later, we were comparing bruises [in the locker room] and saying, ‘Oh, he must have been tired on you because yours isn’t nearly as bad as mine,'” Hutchinson’s sister, Stefanie, said.
She said some sessions were so vigorous that paddles broke and had to be duct-taped back together.
Erickson and other students say officials were acutely aware of the law. She said the school’s director handed out waivers in late 2003 in anticipation of the Supreme Court ban, asked parents to allow staff to continue paddling their children. Some parents refused to sign the document.
Kelly said waivers would be useless as a defence in court. A parent cannot consent to another person applying punitive physical force on their child.
One year after the Supreme Court ruling, the Saskatchewan government passed legislation banning corporal punishment in public schools. Kelly and Watkinson said this was “redundant” because the Supreme Court ruling already applied across Canada.
The Saskatoon Police Service has completed an investigation of alleged assaults and other abuse suffered by students at Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy. The file has been handed to Crown prosecutors to consider possible charges, according to police emails to students. (CBC)
Academics said corporal punishment actually makes things worse. In a 2012 meta-analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, authors found that children who were spanked, paddled or strapped are more likely to have mental health issues, are more prone to violence and have lower quality relationships than those raised in a non-violent manner.
“Virtually without exception, these studies found that physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression against parents, siblings, peers and spouses,” stated the summary.
One of that paper’s authors, University of Manitoba professor Joan Durant, said the accounts of the Saskatoon students are heartbreaking.
“All of those things you describe are degradation and abuse. Intentionally instilling fear, isolation — none of that is acceptable. It never was,” said Durant, author of the book Positive Discipline in Everyday Life.
‘She doesn’t have a demon — she’s just shy’: parent
In their written statement to CBC News, school officials say paddling hasn’t been used there for two decades. When asked for specifics, they declined.
They said exorcism “has never been practised in our school, and we are unaware of any instance where this might have occurred.”
Former students say that’s not true.
On top of the exorcism described by the Nolin family, Hutchinson said they also took place on school property.
Hutchinson said when she was eight years old, she was asked to say the school prayer for the class. She was nervous and froze. She said that, for a week, the teacher kept her inside during recess. The teacher would sit Hutchinson on her lap, firmly squeeze and rock her repeatedly while speaking in tongues, Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson told her parents, who told administration, “She doesn’t have a demon — she’s just shy.”
In the statement, officials said any homophobia alleged by Coy Nolin and others does not exist at the school today.
“Our position on LGBTQ issues is that all students are welcome in our school, and we strive to provide a safe place for every student to grow and learn who God created them to be…we are committed to creating an environment where everyone is valued and treated with dignity, love, and respect. Therefore, we would never discipline students for their sexual orientation or gender identity,” said the statement.
They say the school is a different place than it was even a few years ago, with many new staff and leaders.
“We would welcome conversations with any students who might wish to come and revisit the school and, hopefully, find an opportunity for reconciliation,” it said.
Caitlin Erickson, Sean Kotelmach, Coy Nolin, Christina Hutchinson and others say many of the longtime staff and their relatives remain in key positions, from the pastor to the school principal.
They say no effort has been made to apologize publicly or privately.
Students waiting for justice
The students say their anxiety is growing as they wait to hear from police and prosecutors.
It’s unclear when Crown prosecutors will decide whether charges are warranted. In an email to a student, a Saskatoon police investigator said abuse files involving only a single complainant and accused can take six weeks for prosecutors to decide on possible charges. She said this file had been passed to Crown prosecutors and a decision on possible charges could take until April 2023.
A Saskatchewan Justice official declined to give details on the file and recommended asking the Saskatoon Police Service. A Saskatoon police official said they can’t comment because the investigation is ongoing.
Former students of the Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, say all government subsidies and tax breaks for the school and adjacent Mile Two Church must be halted until police and prosecutors have dealt with their abuse complaints and the government has conducted a full investigation of the school’s current practices. (Jason Warick/CBC)
Students say the people who committed the abuse must be held accountable, but that there were many other adults who witnessed it and did nothing. They wonder why this systemic abuse was ignored for so long.
That’s why they want the provincial government to investigate the school itself, freezing any funding and cancelling any tax breaks until all questions are answered.
In a written statement, a provincial Ministry of Education official said three on-site inspections are now conducted annually on independent schools, and the most recent one at Legacy Christian Academy occurred June 8.
It also said the Ministry of Education “has not received any complaints regarding LCA since funding for Qualified Independent Schools (QIS) began in 2012.”
Erickson says that’s not true. She shared a June 20 email exchange with Education Minister Dustin Duncan’s assistant.
Erickson emailed Duncan to say she “reached out to your office a number of times and received no response.” She identifies herself as a former student of Christian Centre Academy, now Legacy Christian Academy, and informs him of the criminal investigation underway.
“You have been told time and time again the damage these schools do,” she said before calling on the minister to de-fund LCA and other private Christian schools.
The provincial government says it hasn’t received any complaints about Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy. But former students say that’s not true, and provided CBC News with recent email exchanges with Education Minister Dustin Duncan’s office. (Kirk Fraser/CBC News)
The minister’s assistant wrote back “on behalf of Minister Duncan” and acknowledged receipt of Erickson’s email.
“The Minister’s response will be forthcoming. Thank-you for taking the time to write,” stated the email.
Erickson said she knows of at least one other former student who recently told Duncan to de-fund LCA.
‘I’m proud of who I am’: Coy
Coy and his mother Carilyn say that following the exorcism in their home, officials declared Coy would be sent away to a special school in Edmonton to be “cured” of being gay.
Carilyn said she had ignored other warning signs over the years — including officials forcing Coy and the others to attend protests against gay marriage legislation — because her extended family, friends, finances and children’s futures were all connected to the church and school.
But the exorcism was too much. She stayed up all night writing a letter to the director and placed it on the windshield of his car.
“I thought this would be a wonderful school, but this was ridiculous. I am not sending my child away,” she said.
“We left and never looked back. It was like a thousand-pound weight lifted from my chest. It was the best thing I ever did.”
After graduating from a public high school a year later, Coy Nolin spent a couple of years in Banff, terrified to admit he was gay even to his own mother.
He eventually told her in a phone call.
“I know. I love you. Come home,” she said. Coy did.
Now working in a Saskatoon department store and in a loving relationship, the 34-year-old said life is still a struggle but he has many reasons to be grateful.
“It took a long time,” he said. “But I’m proud of who I am.”
CBC News has learned 18 former students of a private Christian school in Saskatoon have filed criminal complaints for alleged abuse, including paddling, coercion, traumatizing rituals and solitary confinement. https://t.co/WLO9nqaia7
CBC News has learned 18 former students of a private Christian school in Saskatoon have filed criminal complaints for alleged abuse, including paddling, coercion, traumatizing rituals and solitary confinement. https://t.co/WLO9nqaia7
It’s been 422 days since I came forward to police about the abuse that went on at the K-12 Christian School I attended in Saskatoon. #saskatoonhttps://t.co/Hj5dxpDIpw
Caitlin Erickson was the first of 18 former students of Saskatoon's Christian Centre Academy, now called Legacy Christian Academy, to go to police. She says the degree of control exerted by school and church officials was similar to a cult. pic.twitter.com/oPrBff5d6Y
Saskatoon police have completed an investigation of alleged assaults and other abuse suffered by former students of Christian Centre Academy. The file has been handed to Crown prosecutors to consider possible charges, according to emails to students from police obtained by CBC. pic.twitter.com/CkyH0zo6Ar
The Sask. government says it hasn't received any complaints about Christian Centre Academy since it began receiving provincial funding in 2012. But former students say that's not true, and provided CBC with recent email exchanges with Education Minister Dustin Duncan's office. pic.twitter.com/ejKUSaYOZH
The Sask. government says it hasn't received any complaints about Christian Centre Academy since it began receiving provincial funding in 2012. But former students say that's not true, and provided CBC with recent email exchanges with Education Minister Dustin Duncan's office. pic.twitter.com/ejKUSaYOZH
This is what the republican party is now. Conspiracy nuts, Qanon followers, religious fanatics, white supremacist racist bigots, and maga cult members. These used to be fringe candidates if they were not simply ignored outright. Now they are supported, funded, and put on ballots. And in a lot of places they are winning. Scary that if elected these people will be making our laws. Hugs
The Republican Party’s nominee for Maryland attorney general hosted a series of five radio shows in 2006 devoted to arguing in support of 9/11 conspiracy theories questioning if the terror attack was the work of an “elite bureaucrat” who had demolition charges in every building in New York City.
Michael Peroutka, a candidate best known for his ties to neo-Confederate organizations, made the remarks on The American View, a radio show he co-hosted, in October 2006 while discussing the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack, even suggesting if those who died after a hijacked plane hit the Pentagon were killed elsewhere.
In the above-linked piece, you can hear audio of Peroutka claiming, “You can’t have an explosion in the basement that’s done by the hijacker on the airplane,” which, he claims, proves that the attack was an “inside job.”
Peroutka, a former board member of the neo-Confederate League of the South, has appeared a JMG over a dozen times in the last decade for anti-gay and racist stunts, most recently when he headlined a rally for anti-gay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis.
The League of the South is best known for burning the Israeli flag, making Hitler salutes, and calling the Holocaust the “Holohoax.”
You may also recall that the League Of The South recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of the assassination of “tyrant” Abraham Lincoln and provided the signage for anti-gay rallies in Alabama.
Peroutka was the largest financial backer of now-former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s successful campaign to be returned to the bench.
The GOP nominee for Maryland attorney general echoed 9/11 conspiracy theories and called the attacks an "inside job," a CNN review finds https://t.co/uBddswTjEA
The Republican party has become the party of drunk Uncle Ernie, who doesn’t get invited to family reunions anymore, because he scares the kids and breaks things.
I’m surprised he didn’t say that it was a Jewish conspiracy. Why did he hold back?
The one I’ve heard is that all the Jewish people working in the towers had ‘called in sick’ that day. Ridiculous and enraging, but people do believe this.
Michael Peroutka, a candidate best known for his ties to neo-Confederate organizations
He sounds like a QAnon. There’s very little daylight between their beliefs and the beliefs of today’s Nazis and neo-Confederates. Frankly it’s a white supremacist spectrum that encompasses a lot of people in this country. The ability to attract new believers among uneducated whites is becoming greater and greater due to the Internet and disinformation spread by organized secret societies.
If you go to the web site of the story you can see a blown up picture of the one in the tweet with him at the desk surrounded by girls. Notice the two little girls with signs who look like they cannot believe they had to come and do this cosplay. Hugs
Student athletes at Oklahoma public schools are now required to complete “biological sex affidavits” to determine whether they are eligible to participate in athletics as school districts begin enforcing a state law.
In March, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed into law the state’s “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which requires sports teams through college to be designated based on athletes’ “biological sex,” or sex assigned at birth.
In early July, the CBS-affiliate KOAM-TV reported that some school districts were beginning to distribute “biological sex affidavits” to student athletes to enforce the law.
In my 55 years on earth, I dont remember Republicans giving a crap about woman’s sports. I guess it took transgendered athletes to finally make them care.
This. My couldn’t-care-less-about-any-sports in the 30 years I’ve known him BIL (more an outdoor / photography / camping guy) suddenly started protesting to “save women’s sports” last year. The biggest farce I’ve ever seen – it was clear GQP talking points..
If this disqualifies someone from team sports, at least they won’t have to participate in public prayers at the 50-yard line. Always look on the bright side of life?
Are they going to do genetic testing for every child to confirm it? Are they going to pay for it? Isn’t there a HIPAA thing or is that out in Oklahoma?
After all the coverage of Lauren Hubbard, a trans woman weightlifter competing in the Olympics, she didn’t make a single lift when she’s in her prime age as a weightlifter and got clobbered by Li Wenwen, a 21 year old Chinese lifter who won her weight class (over 81 kg) on her first lift. She’s really a kid in the grand scheme of weightlifting and unless she gets injured, can compete in another 4 Olympics. You peak in your mid 30’s.
I’m pretty sure they went with the birth certificate as an end run around HIPAA. The birth certificate counts as state record, rather than medical record. And, no, they’re no going to pay for it.
Does this mean that transmen will now be competing in women’s sports? Or is it just a way to keep transgender people from competing in any sports at all? I think we know the answer to that…
The telling point is: will this apply equally to men’s sports as well? What if a high school’s star quarterback refuses to file such a document on general principles?
So the linked article is incorrect, and this will apply ONLY to (presumed) female students and not all students? That could be a problem if (presumed) male students are exempted, as that directly violates Title IX.
Waiting for one of these red school districts to defund/shutdown women’s sports in school and blame it on transgender students “ruining women’s sports for everyone.”
Russian students heading back to school in the autumn will be taught about the country’s values amid the Kremlin’s wider campaign to implement “patriotic” education in schools.
Starting from September 5, schools across the country will dedicate hours to so-called “conversations about important things”, Sergei Novikov, head of the presidential directorate for social projects, told Tass, the state news agency.
These “conversations” would focus on the values of Russian society as enshrined in the country’s national security strategy, he said.
Russian students heading back to school in the autumn will be taught about the country’s values amid the Kremlin’s wider campaign to implement “patriotic” education in schools
— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) August 1, 2022
The DeathSantis kingdom of Florida. DeathSantis is the warlord / feudal lord who wants to be king of the country. He thinks his kingdom is above the federal government. He has fought Biden on every measure to protect the public from Covid going so far as to demand businesses not follow federal rules then either. No matter how the courts ruled against him like his mentor TFG he claimed he won and was still the king. Hugs
Florida is advising school districts to ignore protections for LGBTQ students that President Joe Biden’s administration is trying to implement
ByBRENDAN FARRINGTON Associated Press
July 29, 2022, 5:28 PM
Florida advised school districts to ignore protections for LGBTQ students that President Joe Biden’s administration is trying to implement, saying the anti-discrimination language is not binding law and following the guidance could result in breaking state law.
Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz wrote to school districts Thursday saying they should not change current practices because of proposed new rules under Title IX that would extend sexual discrimination protections to students based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
“Nothing in these guidance documents requires you to give biological males who identify as female access to female bathrooms, locker rooms, or dorms … or to allow biological males who identify as female to compete on female sports teams,” Diaz said.
He added that doing any of those things would “jeopardize the safety and wellbeing of Florida students and risk violating Florida law.”
But Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the only statewide elected Democrat and whose agency overseas school lunch programs, said the matter wasn’t just about bathrooms, but also about feeding students. The United States Department of Agriculture requires schools to put up a poster on nondiscrimination in order to receive federal money for lunch programs, she said.
“This is a fictitious culture war that they have created that is going to deny kids food,” Fried, who hopes to challenge Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, said at a news conference. “I will do everything possible to ensure that Florida’s kids are not victimized by the DeSantis administration and denied their meals.”
Fried’s department recently told schools they should hang posters with the new language. The Diaz letter told schools to disregard that guidance because it could violate state law.
Last year, DeSantis signed a bill banning anyone assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ or women’s sports. This year, he signed a bill that prohibits discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation in public schools at least through grade 3.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Tennessee blocked implementation of the proposed new federal protections after 20 states sued over the issue.
Florida's commissioner of education, Manny Diaz Jr., told school districts to disregard federal guidance aimed at protecting LGBTQ students https://t.co/1GEB6HMxGS
Florida advised school districts to ignore protections for LGBTQ students that President Joe Biden's administration is trying to implement…https://t.co/GQGCnpWyUA
Their public schools are already cratering (by design for privatization) because the teachers are retiring and leaving in droves, leaving a massive deficit – they’re hiring veterans with no teaching experience at dozens of elementary schools (and that’s just one example)
The (public) schools need both federal and state dollars. The FL DoEd under DeSantis doesn’t give shit the bind that they’ve created for the schools or the students. They’re just in a partisan pissing match.
When I was younger, I thought, well, I’ll wait until the prejudice old people die off, then maybe retire to Florida. Sadly, I’m a senior now, and nothing has changed in that state. It’s like hate, prejudice, and religion really kick in down there when someone turns 50.
Coach D is in an interracial marriage. In this heartfelt video, Coach D draws on his personal experience and asks the GOP why are they so focused on destroying interracial marriage and same sex marriage and now disgusting their desire to do so is.
Well he is saying the quiet part out loud and proud. Over you!! In the name of their Jesus! They will discipline this nation, meaning us that are not religious fanatics like them or follow their church doctrines. Wonder if we will all have to go to church, their church of course? What about other religious faiths, will they be allowed? I already know the Jewish faith is a no-no for them. I already know what will happen to my people. How are you at dodging large stones? This is the American Taliban folks. They have seen how it worked in Afghanistan and they liked it. They are the US ISIS, those who would rule by their religion with force. Hugs
Via email from Gab CEO Andrew Torba:
We are forming a Christian Nationalist movement and in order to be in any position of influence or leadership in the movement you must be a Christian.
We are no longer going to answer to people who do not share our values and represent a diametrically different worldview that only 2% of the country holds.
We are the 70%+ super majority in this country and we are going to do everything we can to take dominion and disciple this nation for the glory of Jesus Christ our King.
As I have said in my previous articles and videos they have pushed us too far by locking down our churches, masking our children, and forcing us to inject a foreign substance in our bodies in order to keep our jobs.
We are no longer being silent. The silent majority is getting loud and speaking the Truth of God’s Word and the Biblical worldview boldly.
The email ends, as they all do, with a money beg. Jesus needs money. Always.
Gab's Christian nationalist founder Andrew Torba says his policy and that of Doug Mastriano is "not to conduct interview with reporters who aren't Christian or with outlets who aren't Christian."https://t.co/kDiYJlVoY9
“Doug Mastriano consultant and Gab CEO Andrew Torba has a message for right-wing Jewish commentators including Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin: You’re not welcome in our movement unless you “repent” and renounce your Jewish faith.”https://t.co/ZQj8UlMcEP
Torba — who, again, is a consultant for Mastriano — has also touted his site as a place to get "differing opinions" about the Holocaust. https://t.co/wNi8t1cPhs
When in the long history of Christianity have Christians been silent? When has the imposition of their private beliefs on public law not been their goal? When have christians not insinuated themselves into positions of power favoring other Christians for positions below them? When have Christians not steered public dollars to private pockets?
These people are scary. They believe they are above any law, court, or authority. They spout that Sheriffs are the ones who decide what laws are legal & constitutional, and that they have more power and authority than the president. They think they have little kingdoms like some kind of feudal lord. Hugs
In rural Michigan, county Sheriff Dar Leaf has teamed with a Trump-camp lawyer to chase the former president’s outlandish rigged-election theories. A member of a radical group of “constitutional sheriffs,” he’s now under investigation himself.
Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged has been decisively debunked by local election officials, state and federal courts, and the former president’s own attorney general. All deemed his case bogus.
Here in Michigan’s rural Barry County, Sheriff Dar Leaf rejects all that.
Since late 2020, Leaf has been investigating one of Trump’s most fantastical false assertions – that vote-counting machines somehow flipped votes from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. Working with key figures in the former president’s failed effort to overturn the election, the Republican sheriff has petitioned courts seeking to seize election equipment, assigned investigators to grill local clerks about balloting processes and made sweeping requests for their records. The sheriff is barreling ahead despite the conclusions of judges and the county’s Republican prosecutor that he lacked probable cause.
In the process, Leaf is roiling conservative Barry County, where Trump won decisively, and testing a legal theory with revolutionary implications for American democracy.
Dar Leaf is one of four “constitutional sheriffs” who have launched probes seeking evidence to prove Donald Trump’s false rigged-election claims. REUTERS/Bridget Bennett
Leaf is in the vanguard of the so-called “constitutional sheriffs” movement, which asserts that sheriffs, typically elected in counties, possess supreme law-enforcement power in their jurisdictions – exceeding that of state police, federal agencies and any other official, including the U.S. president. The movement’s most prominent group, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, takes the extreme position that sheriffs can and should ignore any law they deem unconstitutional.
Richard Mack, the association’s founder, called federal and state bureaucracies “the Gestapo of America” that routinely adopt unconstitutional policies. “The sheriffs are going to have to stop it,” said Mack, a former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, at the association’s conference in Las Vegas earlier this month.
The association claims sheriffs derive extraordinary powers from the oath they take to defend the constitution and its principle of separation of powers between local, state and federal agencies. Two constitutional scholars interviewed by Reuters dismissed that theory, saying it has no basis in the founding document or in U.S. history.
In May, the association announced that it’s encouraging sheriffs to mount their own investigations into Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims. So far, Leaf is one of four known to have launched such probes. But the movement appears to be growing; the association says more than 300 of the nation’s 3,000 elected sheriffs have gone through its training programs since 2020.
In Michigan, Colorado, Arizona and other states, officials have blasted the constitutional sheriffs for undermining public faith in the integrity of elections and the local officials who run them.
The constitutional sheriffs movement takes the extreme position that the county law enforcement officials should ignore any law they deem unconstitutional. REUTERS/Bridget Bennett
At a recent gathering of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in Las Vegas, leaders of the movement called for sheriffs to investigate Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. REUTERS/Bridget Bennett
Now, Leaf himself is under scrutiny in a probe by state Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, into whether Trump backers illegally accessed voting equipment seeking fraud evidence in several jurisdictions in Michigan, a pivotal 2020 election battleground.
The state’s top election official, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, initially requested that the attorney general investigate. She told Reuters that the probe is expansive. “We want to see if there’s coordination” among those seeking illegal access to election equipment and whether that coordination reaches “up to a national level,” said Benson, a Democrat.
Reuters reporting reveals that it does. The news organization conducted dozens of interviews, reviewed video from public meetings and examined scores of documents obtained through public records requests to explore Leaf’s investigation and the misinformation driving it. Among the findings: People spearheading Trump’s rigged-election claims in Michigan were deeply involved with Sheriff Leaf early on, making Barry County a pillar of their efforts to overturn the presidential vote in a fiercely contested state that Biden won by 154,000 votes of 5.5 million cast.
In April, Michigan State Police raided the clerk’s office in Barry County’s Irving Township, a locus of Leaf’s probe. The officers confiscated a vote tabulator suspected of being taken and examined without proper authorization – a felony in Michigan. The Irving Township clerk, Sharon Olson, told police that an investigator working with Leaf’s department had taken the tabulator to “forensically” examine it, according to a state police report reviewed by Reuters. Olson, a Republican, told state police that the sheriff’s office asked her to give the investigator the equipment and that Leaf told her it was “fine,” according to the report.
Olson declined to comment on the incident.
Leaf denied any wrongdoing in an interview and said that no one from his department “touched any tabulators in my county.” Leaf’s office worked closely with a private investigator, Michael Lynch, on its election-fraud probe, but the sheriff told Reuters he did not know if Lynch took the Irving Township tabulator. Leaf told investigators he did not authorize anyone to take the device, according to the state police report.
Lynch did not respond to requests for comment.
That case is among at least 17 incidents identified by Reuters nationwide, including 11 in Michigan, in which Trump supporters are alleged to have gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment.
Leaf said he’s concerned that tabulators nationwide were rigged to throw Trump votes to Biden and that it may have happened in Barry County.
State and federal courts have cited insufficient evidence in rejecting Leaf’s requests for orders authorizing him to seize voting equipment in his county and statewide. The sheriff remains undeterred: “We’re going to keep going,” he said. “We get new information almost daily.”
Leaf said the state investigation has “kind of interfered with what we are doing.” Last month, he sued the attorney general and other Michigan officials, arguing that the state’s investigation has usurped his power as a “constitutional sheriff” to probe election fraud allegations in his county.
The attorney general and state police declined to comment on their investigation into Leaf and others chasing baseless voter-fraud claims in Michigan.
Leaf’s investigation was guided from the start by Stefanie Lambert, a Detroit attorney who was part of a legal team, led by prominent pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, that filed a federal suit immediately after the election seeking to overturn Michigan’s results. The judge found the suit’s claims of “massive voter fraud” so baseless that she sanctioned Lambert, Powell and other lawyers on the case for misconduct.
Lambert is now representing Leaf in his lawsuit against Michigan officials. Powell did not respond to requests for comment. Lambert now faces an effort by the attorney general, governor and secretary of state to have her disbarred. She did not comment in response to inquiries.
Leaf and his fellow constitutional sheriffs are part of a much broader effort within the pro-Trump right to gain control over the U.S. election system. In at least 15 states, candidates who embrace the false stolen-election narrative are campaigning for secretary of state, the top voting-administration office, in November’s elections, according to the States United Action, a non-partisan election integrity group. In Florida, the Republican governor has set up an election-police squad meant to ensure voting “integrity.” In Pennsylvania, Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, who backs Trump’s voter-fraud claims, is running on a platform that includes compelling all voters to re-register; making it easier for poll-watchers to challenge voters; and appointing a like-minded secretary of state to investigate and overturn elections.
“I could decertify every election machine in the state with the stroke of my pen, via my secretary of state,” Mastriano told an interviewer in March.
Constitutional sheriffs, with their investigations into Trump’s false voter fraud claims, are part of a much broader effort on the political right to gain control over the U.S. election system. REUTERS/Bridget Bennett
The upheaval in Barry County shows how the right’s misinformation-fueled efforts to control elections have spread to even the smallest towns. Here and in some other conservative communities, Trump-aligned activists have sown doubt and discord that is putting long-serving election clerks on the defensive, forcing them to fight off specious claims that are often embraced by their constituents.
Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes said such efforts are an attempt to make election extremism palatable to mainstream American conservatives, a phenomenon he said could fester quickly. He pointed to the Capitol riots as a harbinger of the potentially frightening “speed of radicalization” of anti-democratic efforts on the political right.
The involvement of “people with guns and badges” to intimidate voters, and attempts to access voting equipment, could become “go-to tactics,” said Sykes, the editor of the Bulwark website and the author of How the Right Lost its Mind.
“It doesn’t feel hyperbolic to say this is extremely dangerous,” Sykes said.
‘Speculative leaps’
Leaf has been the sheriff for 18 years in Barry County, a largely agricultural patch of southwest Michigan with about 63,000 residents, 96% of them white. Trump won the election here by a margin of two-to-one. Leaf oversees about 65 people, including about 30 deputies and detectives, from a squat, concrete building with a sticker on the front door announcing that lawful carrying of handguns is “welcome and encouraged” on the premises.
Leaf was reelected in 2020 without opposition despite widespread criticism for appearing earlier that year at a right-wing militia group’s rally. He later suggested that a plot by some militia members to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor may have been a lawful attempt to make a citizen’s arrest. He remains popular in the county despite the growing number of officials, mostly Republicans, who have publicly condemned his election-fraud investigation.
Leaf declined to detail any election-fraud evidence his investigators have found, saying it could compromise his probe. He said, however, that his suspicions are based in part on a data analysis provided by Seth Keshel, a Trump ally and national leader in the election-overturn movement. Leaf said Keshel gave him an analysis specifically for Barry County that suggested fraud, which the sheriff said should help provide “probable cause” for his investigation.
Keshel’s analysis, based on historical voting and registration patterns, has been widely discredited by experts in elections and statistics. Reached by Reuters, Keshel acknowledged his model cannot definitely prove fraud but maintained it can spotlight where results should be investigated.
Leaf told Reuters he first became concerned about election-rigging four months before the 2020 vote, when two lawyers, who he did not identify, visited him at his office with an alarming claim: That vote tabulators used in his county, supplied by Dominion Voting Systems of Colorado, could be hacked and reprogrammed to flip votes.
After Biden won, Trump and his top lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, championed the voting-machine conspiracy theory. Trump’s supporters pressured Leaf to seize voting equipment in his county and seek evidence for the aggrieved president’s claims, Leaf told Reuters. He quickly launched an effort to gain access to voting machines, teaming up with Lambert, the lawyer seeking to overturn Michigan’s election results.
Lambert represented Leaf as he filed suit in federal court on Dec. 7, 2020, seeking an order “to impound all voting machines and software in Michigan for expert inspection.” A Republican-appointed federal judge dismissed it a day later as based on “speculative leaps.” That same month, Leaf also petitioned a state judge for a warrant to seize voting equipment in Barry County; that bid was rejected, too, for lack of probable cause.
Leaf’s demand was radical. Vote-counting equipment is highly secure and subject to stringent chain-of-custody requirements to protect against tampering that could compromise accuracy or enable fraud. Access to tabulators generally is restricted to certified election officials and authorized technicians. Any machine accessed by an unauthorized person is taken out of commission.
Despite legal setbacks, Leaf pressed on with his investigation after Biden’s inauguration in January 2021. He had theories about rigged voting machines but lacked a formal criminal complaint of wrongdoing to give his probe a firm legal footing. He soon got one – from one of his former deputy sheriffs.
Sheriff Dar Leaf asked a federal court on Dec. 7 for authorization “to impound all voting machines and software in Michigan for expert inspection.” A Republican-appointed judge dismissed the request a day later as based on “speculative leaps.”
That spring, Julie Jones, who had retired two years earlier from Leaf’s office, filed a complaint saying she had obtained information that voting results in Barry County were “intentionally manipulated to favor one candidate.” The complaint names no suspects; it lists the victim as “Society.”
Jones could not be reached for comment.
Her complaint was based almost entirely on claims made by Matthew DePerno, a Michigan lawyer and Trump supporter who is now running for state attorney general. DePerno had filed a suit alleging that vote tabulators could be rigged to flip votes from Trump to Biden. DePerno brought the suit on behalf of a voter in Antrim County, about 200 miles from Leaf’s turf. Antrim, like Barry, uses Dominion ballot-counting machines.
The Antrim suit, filed against the county and state, ultimately was dismissed, a decision affirmed this year by the Michigan Court of Appeals. Its three judges, including two Republican appointees, said the suit “merely raised a series of questions about the election without making any specific factual allegations.”
The Trump camp nevertheless used the Antrim suit as fodder for its legal assault on the election. A debunked report commissioned by DePerno’s team was cited in a draft presidential order dated Dec. 16, 2020, that would have ordered the U.S. secretary of defense to seize voting machines. Trump never issued the order.
DePerno did not answer specific questions from Reuters but he disputed the contention that the voter-fraud allegations in Antrim county were baseless or unproven.
Sheriff Dar Leaf’s headquarters in Barry County, Michigan, where a sign greets visitors telling them that carrying handguns inside is “welcome and encouraged.” REUTERS/Emily Elconin
Theories from a failed lawsuit
As Lambert was helping Leaf, she was mounting a similar effort to get access to voting equipment 250 miles away in Cheboygan County, a conservative stronghold of 25,000 people on the state’s northern tip.
Lambert’s story of her entry into Trump world’s orbit illustrates the haphazard way the legal team challenging his election defeat was assembled. A former prosecutor in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, Lambert had started her own criminal defense practice, she told the right-wing websites Gateway Pundit and 100 Percent Fed Up in July 2021. She entered the voter-fraud fray, she said, when a person she did not identify asked her in November 2020 to deliver an affidavit about election fraud to the White House. She soon after contacted Powell and Giuliani directly, she said.
“From there, I was the local attorney on the Michigan Sidney Powell case,” she told the websites, which routinely promote pro-Trump, rigged-election conspiracy theories.
Lambert introduced herself as part of DePerno’s “Antrim election team” at an April 14, 2021, meeting organized by Cheboygan County’s Board of Commissioners. She offered to conduct a “forensic analysis” to see if Cheboygan’s machines were rigged, according to video of the meeting obtained by Reuters through a public-records request.
As in Barry County, Lambert cited the Antrim suit in an effort to win over Cheboygan leaders. An affidavit by Benjamin Cotton, founder of the digital forensics firm CyFIR LLC, contained a potentially explosive claim: that a Dominion ballot-marking device had communicated with Internet-protocol addresses in Germany and Taiwan – purported evidence that it could have been hacked.
Cotton did not respond to requests for comment.
In reality, the device was never connected to the Internet before, during or after the election, according to Dominion and Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy, a Republican. Dominion, in a statement, said the accuracy of the 2020 results has been confirmed in countless independent reviews. It called the Michigan hacking and vote-flipping allegations “yet another example of how lies about Dominion have damaged our company and diminished the public’s faith in elections.”
After Lambert’s pitch, Cheboygan’s commissioners – all Republicans – requested that the state allow it to audit the county’s 2020 results. By this time, a judge had dismissed the Antrim case, ruling that the plaintiff had no right to a new review of the voting because statewide audits had already affirmed the results. Michigan’s Bureau of Elections denied Cheboygan’s request, and the effort to review the machines there fizzled.
‘I was panicked’
In Barry County, however, Sheriff Leaf pushed ahead, now armed with his former deputy’s complaint.
At Lambert’s suggestion, in the spring of 2021 Leaf brought in a private investigator: Michael Lynch, who worked with Lambert and DePerno on the Antrim suit, according to promotional material for a California event featuring Lynch as a speaker. Leaf assigned one of his deputy sheriffs, Kevin Erb, to team up with Lynch.
Erb did not respond to requests for comment.
Soon, Lynch and Erb began making unannounced visits to the elected clerks who oversee voting in the county’s townships. The pair told the clerks they were being interviewed as part of a criminal investigation – and advised them to tell no one, two clerks who received the visits told Reuters.
On June 11, the deputy left a message with Carlton Township Clerk Amanda Brown on her day off, asking her to meet them immediately at her office.
“His voicemail said there’s an ongoing criminal investigation of election fraud in Carlton Township, and they wanted to talk to me,” Brown, a Republican, told Reuters. “I was panicked. I was upset.”
Brown called Barry County Clerk Pamela Palmer, a Republican who took office in 2015. Palmer, too, was stunned. She is responsible for training and overseeing local clerks on election operations, but she had heard nothing about the Leaf probe. Palmer immediately drove to the Carlton Township office, where she buttonholed Lynch and the deputy. They informed her that they had already questioned five clerks.
“Why didn’t I know about this?” Palmer said she asked the investigators, who told her they were “working under the element of surprise.”
Barry County clerk Pamela Palmer holds a tabulator machine in her lap at the Barry County Courthouse outside of the clerk offices in Hastings, Michigan, U.S., July 11, 2022. REUTERS/Emily Elconin
She recalled telling them: “There’s nothing to investigate. We ran a clean election.”
A few days later, still steaming, Palmer called Barry County’s elected prosecutor, Julie Nakfoor Pratt, to protest that the clerks were unfairly being cast under suspicion. Pratt told Reuters that she, too, was blindsided by Leaf’s investigation, though she had worked effectively with the sheriff, a fellow Republican, on hundreds of cases over a decade.
Pratt said she went to see Leaf at his office on July 13. She found him flanked by Lambert, Lynch and a third out-of-towner from Trump world: James Penrose, a former analyst and manager for the National Security Agency. Penrose had provided technical guidance to Powell’s legal team on their failed federal suit to overturn Michigan’s election and to other Trump allies working nationally to reverse Biden’s victory.
Barry County prosecutor Julie Nakfoor Pratt. Handout via REUTERS
Lambert pressed prosecutor Pratt to seek warrants to seize vote tabulators and records from local clerks, Pratt said.
“I heard them out, but I didn’t see evidence of a crime,” said Pratt, who told them there was no probable cause to raid clerks’ offices. Lambert, Pratt said, “was very insistent. She kept interrupting. But I held my ground.”
Penrose did not respond to requests for comment.
Lambert’s team left the prosecutor with three binders of material collected in the Leaf investigation. Pratt studied the material for two days and concluded there was “nothing there.” It read like a rehash of conspiracy theories and misinformation that judges had already rejected in lawsuits from Trump lawyers and allies.
Pratt called Sheriff Leaf and urged him to suspend his investigation because it was “putting our clerks under a cloud with no evidence.”
Leaf disputed that Pratt ever asked him to stop investigating or said that he was unfairly implicating clerks. “It’s not us versus the clerks,” he said.
More security breaches, and a state probe
Election-fraud allegations – and efforts by Trump supporters to get their hands on voting equipment – kept popping up around Michigan.
About 80 miles south of Barry County, the State Police in October launched an investigation into Adams Township’s clerk, Stephanie Scott, a Republican. The secretary of state had reprimanded Scott for refusing to allow routine maintenance on her voting equipment. Scott, a Trump supporter, said in a township meeting that she resisted the procedures in the belief they could erase data from the 2020 election that she considered potential evidence. State officials have said the maintenance would have no effect on preservation of data from past elections.
At the secretary of state’s orders, the clerk of Hillsdale county, which includes Adams Township, stepped in to take possession of the town’s voting equipment. The county clerk discovered that a key component had gone missing from one of the tabulators under Scott’s control – the scan unit, which is the brains of the device. State police soon discovered the part in Scott’s own office. The investigation continues. Lambert is serving as Scott’s lawyer.
Scott did not respond to requests for comment.
In February of this year, the secretary of state’s office got wind of a security breach of vote tabulators and data drives in Roscommon County, another conservative bastion in north-central Michigan.
Secretary of State Benson announced Feb. 10 that she had asked the state attorney general to begin a criminal investigation into the election security breaches, citing the Roscommon case. That probe has since expanded to include at least five towns and three counties, all of them rural areas Trump won easily in 2020, according to state police records obtained through records requests.
The voting-system breaches in at least two of the jurisdictions being scrutinized by state police – Roscommon and Missaukee counties – came after a Republican state lawmaker who champions Trump’s stolen-election claims pressured at least five clerks in the area to provide access to their voting equipment. The lawmaker, Daire Rendon, did not respond to interview requests but previously has denied direct involvement in any breaches.
Leaf’s investigation had gone quiet for several months after last summer when Pratt, the prosecutor, raised concerns to the sheriff about the lack of evidence to justify his probe. Then, early this year, he hired a new deputy on his staff, Mark Noteboom, to help push the investigation forward.
In March, still lacking a warrant to compel cooperation, Noteboom began sending the county’s clerks sweeping public-records requests for data and files from the 2020 election. “This is a criminal investigation,” he wrote in one letter, “so no information shall be redacted from requested materials.”
A backlash quickly followed. Some clerks denied the requests outright, arguing Noteboom and Leaf were seeking records that did not exist or could not be legally provided.
Noteboom declined to comment.
Rutland Charter Township Clerk Robin Hawthorne displays a vote tabulator. She called the 2020 vote “the election that won’t die” because of Donald Trump’s false claims of systemic voter-rigging. REUTERS/Emily Elconin
Rutland Charter Township Clerk Robin Hawthorne, pictured here pointing to ballots, is one of 16 township clerks in Barry County. Sheriff Dar Leaf has sent investigators to question some of these local election administrators about voter fraud, which has angered other local officials who say he has no credible evidence. REUTERS/Emily Elconin
A cooperative clerk
The following month, the attorney general’s investigation turned to Irving Township, where the clerk turned over her office’s Dominion vote tabulator to the investigator working with Sheriff Leaf’s office. State Police seized the equipment in a raid on the township offices the morning of April 29.
Olson, the township clerk, told police she had been working with Leaf’s office and that she let the investigator take the tabulator without a warrant, according to the state police report. The security seals on the device had been broken, the report said, when the police found it in a bag next to the clerk’s desk.
The report did not specify when the machine was taken or how long it was out of Olson’s custody. Leaf said the tabulator was taken in the spring of 2021. Palmer, the county clerk, said a state police investigator told her the device was taken to Detroit and “torn apart” before being returned to the township. Palmer did not know who took the machine.
Sharon Olson, the township clerk in Irving Township, has repeatedly endorsed Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on social media, along with the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory. State police say Olson improperly handed over her township’s vote tabulator to an investigator working with Sheriff Dar Leaf’s office to probe voter-fraud allegations. REUTERS/Peter Eisler
While many Barry county clerks had been outraged by Leaf’s investigation, Olson was receptive. In Facebook posts reviewed by Reuters, Olson repeatedly embraced false stolen-election claims and shared a video promoting the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, which casts Trump as a savior figure battling a Democratic cabal of satanist pedophiles and cannibals.
The video was entitled: “Q – The Plan to Save The World.”
“I want to believe this will happen,” Olson wrote when she shared it on November 25, 2020, right after Trump’s election loss.
slide 4 to 5 of 5
Irving Township Clerk Sharon Olson has embraced Trump’s false stolen-election claims in posts on social media, and also shared a video promoting the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory.
The 2020 vote was the first presidential election clerked by Olson, who also drives a school bus and served as a U.S. Army logistics officer in Operation Desert Storm. She told the Barry County Commission at its October 2021 meeting that she first suspected voter fraud shortly before election day in 2020, when she noticed an unusual van parked outside the township hall, covered with antennas and obscured by trees, according to video of the commission meeting. She speculated that someone seeking to hack into her vote tabulator may have sent a technical team to access it wirelessly.
Dominion has repeatedly said the tabulators used in Irving Township are not connected to the Internet and can’t be remotely accessed.
Leaf told Reuters that Olson brought her concerns to him and they have become a focus of his investigation. Olson told state police that she believed the investigator who took the tabulator was acting on Leaf’s authority – and that, otherwise, she would not have given it to him, according to the police report.
A state investigator “asked if the Sheriff Department asked her to do this,” the report noted. “She said they did.”
State police redacted the names of Leaf and Olson from the report but the sheriff and the clerk both confirmed the report includes their interviews with state police. The name of the investigator was also redacted. When Reuters asked Leaf whether Lynch – the private investigator working with his deputies – took the tabulator, he said: “I don’t know about that.”
Olson declined to comment on the state police raid but said: “I’m just trying to do what’s right.”
Soon after the raid, state investigators subpoenaed the two sheriff’s investigators Leaf assigned to the voter-fraud probe, Noteboom and Erb, which Leaf took as a direct threat. He told Reuters he looked at the subpoenas and concluded: “Those bastards are going after me!”
A handwritten affidavit from Sheriff Dar Leaf attesting to the fact that he has been investigating voter fraud in the county. The affidavit was filed in connection with Leaf’s lawsuit against the state attorney general.
In early June, Leaf filed his lawsuit asserting that the attorney general and other Michigan officials improperly undermined his authority over county investigations. The suit calls the state police “an unelected and unaccountable strong arm of the state” and accuses state leaders of a campaign to “bully” and “threaten” him.
The attorney general and state police declined to comment on Leaf’s lawsuit.
Olson’s fellow clerks in Barry County say the turmoil stirred up by Sheriff Leaf shows no sign of ending.
“It’s the election that won’t die,” Robin Hawthorne, the Republican clerk of Barry County’s Rutland Charter Township for 18 years, told Reuters. “And Dar Leaf won’t let it die.”
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