By Mike Huckabee
May 25, 2021
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Good evening! Today's Evening Edition includes:
- Daily Bible Verse
- Maricopa County Audit Gets Back To Work
- Texas Stands Up Again
- Congratulations Dan
- George Floyd
- Geniuses At Work
- Speaking Out Against Wokeness
- Reader Writes...
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
BIBLE VERSE OF THE DAY
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Genesis 8:22 KJV
Maricopa County Audit Gets Back To Work
By Mike Huckabee
The Maricopa County election auditors, put in place by the GOP-led Arizona Senate, took a week away because of the high school graduation ceremonies scheduled to take place at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, but those events are over, and, as reported on NEWSMAX (story credited to Associated Press), auditors went back to work on Monday. The 2.1 million ballots had to be carted back over from a nearby building on the fairgrounds, where they’d been guarded 24/7.
I wouldn’t imagine that there’s been any problem with security. Imagine how many pairs of eyes were locked on those boxes of ballots every inch of the way.
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/election-2020-arizona-audit/2021/05/24/id/1022581/
The audit team, which consists of four different firms with different responsibilities, are ramping up their operations, with more tables and counters added this week. Even with that, the operation still hasn’t reached full capacity. So they might speed up even more, though there is no deadline, just the goal of getting it right.
There are a few other differences as well. For example, journalists observing the audit have been advised that Senate liaison Ken Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state, will no longer be answering questions about the audit process. Instead, reporters will be directed to Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen. We’re not sure why this change was made; it likely means nothing but we’ll check into it.
Anyway, even though auditors had some time off, the lawyers and politicians were working overtime, and it’s been, well, tense. We brought you the “special” meeting of the County Board of Supervisors, who unanimously supported a letter by the county recorder condemning the audit and vowing not to cooperate further. “We’re DONE,” they said. (The stunning YouTube video of that meeting is now under restricted access.) Then there was the next-day meeting of auditors and board members Senate President Karen Fann had called, which the auditors attended but the board members boycotted. The idea behind that meeting had been to try to work together without more subpoenas, but that hope apparently has been dashed.
Heck, with the members of this board, even subpoenas and judicial orders don’t work. The lawyers advising them have apparently given them grand delusions of their own power.
The auditors’ claim that the main database had been removed from one of the machines was met with denial and outrage by the board, and CNN and AP reported that auditors walked back that claim. This was inaccurate, and technical forensic expert Ben Cotton of Cyfir, one of the companies performing the audit, wrote a letter to THE EPOCH TIMES to that effect. Cotton says that not only was the database deleted, but he has been able to recover it and is working on retrieving the information on it.
The claim that there are no legal grounds to conduct this audit is inaccurate as well. Senate Republicans had issued a subpoena for all the ballots, plus the voting machines and election data, and a judge upheld this, saying that Maricopa County needed to comply. So the board begrudgingly did, and now they won’t stop carping about it.
They’ve criticized the audit for being conducted by people who don’t normally audit elections, and “journalists” covering this story have stressed the point, calling them “unqualified.” But we think there’s a reason these companies ended up with the job, and it’s a political one. Reportedly, some companies that specialize in election audits have been intimidated from participating in what they’ve been told is conspiracy-theory nonsense. My understanding is that this issue is so politicized, there were companies that chose not to get involved, as it could damage or even destroy their professional relationships with clients. But as you’ll see, the auditors who did accept this mission seem to be doing a highly professional job.
In another update, we now have a portion of the transcript from last Tuesday’s meeting with auditors and state senators (the meeting snubbed by the County Board), and Ben Cotton appears in video testimony. Shocking: he doesn't appear to be a wild-eyed right-wing crazy, but a professional forensic analyst who knows what he's talking about.
The media have been insisting that the fact the auditors were ABLE to recover the information meant it hadn’t really been deleted –- that they’d just been looking in the wrong place before it turned up. But it's amazing what forensics investigators can retrieve that has been "deleted." (That's no doubt why Hillary's aides were instructed to hit her devices with hammers.) Cotton said specifically that the “D” drive of the EMS Primary Server had been deleted. He said it was his extensive experience in data forensics that enabled him to recover the deleted files.
Cotton explains the procedure he followed during this segment of the transcript, as reported by THE CONSERVATIVE TREEHOUSE.
(Editorial note: the headline for THE CONSERVATIVE TREEHOUSE says Cotton accuses the media and board of “intentionally misleading” the public. We didn’t see anything in the story or in their video news report that talked specifically about intentionally misleading; i.e., lying. But reason tells us that they either were deliberately lying or are just such lazy, partisan excuses for journalists that they repeated the false story they wanted to tell. It’s one or the other.).
Cotton’s testimony about the data recovery is technical stuff, but it boils down to the fact that he was able to recover all the deleted files and has gained access to that data. (If I understand correctly, having “access” to the data doesn’t necessarily mean that all of it is readable; we’ll have to cross our fingers that the “data continuity checks” show that it is.) In the course of retrieving this material, Cotton said, he found clear indications –- in the form of an MFT, or master file table –- that the database directory had been deleted from that server.
Finally, members of the Board of Supervisors are now bringing their accusations to the media, in a full-court press to affect public perception of the audit. Specifically, county recorder Stephen Richer, who read a scathing prepared statement at last Monday’s meeting board meeting and who wasn’t even in office during the November election, has taken his show on the road, going on ABC News Monday in an interview with Terry Moran to say there’s no “legitimate reason that would have prompted this audit.” He complained again that the companies doing the audit are not professional or legitimate. I beg to differ; we’ve been watching this drama play out, and the auditors seem to be the ones who are behaving professionally.
I’m not going to link to the article on Yahoo News about Richer's interview, because it contains verbiage that I know not to be correct. For example, this is not a “so-called audit.” It’s a real audit, it's being handled well, and if these board members want to be taken seriously, they need to stop fighting tooth-and-nail against transparency.
Texas Stands Up Again
By Mike Huckabee
A big salute to Texas for standing up once again for common sense and laws that protect public safety. The state just passed a law increasing penalties for protesters who block traffic and making it a felony to obstruct emergency vehicles.
This was a bipartisan measure, passing the House 90-55 and the Senate 25-5. Gov. Greg Abbott said he will sign it into law, tweeting, “Peaceful protest doesn’t include blocking roadways & preventing emergency vehicle access. That chaos won’t be tolerated in Texas.”
Naturally, leftist media decried the bill, claiming Abbott would have arrested the Rev. Martin Luther King for marching in the streets. Not mentioned: King engaged in peaceful, planned, pre-announced marches, and to my knowledge, none of his supporters surrounded cars and threatened the drivers, shot at them, or deliberately blocked entrances to hospital ERs, all behaviors we’ve seen from leftist “protesters” in the past year.
It's sad that we live in a time when it’s necessary to pass strict laws to prevent things that anybody with two brain cells to rub together used to know better than to pull. But then leftists started claiming a right to sleep on sidewalks and in other people’s doorways, or to “protest” by walking out in front of traffic or blocking ambulances and police cars. I agree that we shouldn’t have to pass laws ordering people not to walk out in front of oncoming traffic. But we wouldn’t have to, if leftists had more sense than God gave an armadillo.
Congratulations Dan
By Mike Huckabee
Congratulations to Dan Bongino, who launched his new national radio show Monday in the time slot left open by the death of the late, great Rush Limbaugh. Dan had a good “get” for his first show: an interview with former President Donald Trump, who fired up excitement among his supporters by teasing them with some comments about 2024. You can read more and hear it at this link:
George Floyd
By Mike Huckabee
Today marks one year since the death of George Floyd, and there are marches planned around the nation that we all pray will remain peaceful.
Over the past year, the officer who held Floyd down has been convicted of murder, the other officers are facing trial, and the group Black Lives Matter used anger over Floyd’s death to whip up protests that often turned violent and destructive, largely in black neighborhoods. Floyd’s death was used as an excuse to call for defunding police departments. Thousands of cops, under assault both physically and verbally, quit or retired, which has led to skyrocketing crime in every city where police budgets were cut. Many of the victims of crime and violence have been black residents, since the police presence in their neighborhoods was deliberately scaled back (despite polls showing a majority of blacks wanted more police) and specialty units designed to fight gangs and gun crimes were disbanded. It’s so bad that some of these cities are now desperately re-funding their police departments.
Meanwhile, BLM had a surge of support in polls, followed by a steep fall, as Americans got sick of riots, looting, endless racial divisiveness, racist “anti-racist” rhetoric and hypocritical BLM leaders who raked in millions in donations, bought mansions in upscale neighborhoods, and never shared a penny with those who were really trying to help black communities recover from the violence wrought by the rioters and criminals (sorry, the new preferred euphemism is “justice-involved individuals.” I kid you not.) There are now active backlash movements by state legislatures and parents to bar from schools the racist “Critical Race Theory” that teaches kids to judge others by their skin color and the anti-American “1619 Project” distortion of American history.
On the sad first anniversary of Floyd’s death, racial divisions are the worst they’ve been in years because of the concerted efforts of people who profit by dividing us. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration just told our embassies and consulates that for the rest of 2021, they are authorized to fly the BLM flag on their flagpoles, if they want.
Democrats love to accuse their opponents of being “on the wrong side of history.” I hope and pray that Americans will reject their embrace of racial divisiveness and the destruction of the Rev. King’s dream that people be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, and that they will soon find themselves on the wrong side of history.
For some of the best commentary on this day, I suggest you read this, by my dear friend and the niece of the Rev. King, Alveda King.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/george-floyd-death-anniversary-americans-alveda-king
Geniuses At Work
By Mike Huckabee
The Biden White House, having lifted Trump’s ban on sending millions of dollars in US aid to the Palestinians shortly before Hamas fired thousands of missiles at Israel, is now preparing to send massive amounts of aid to Gaza. But they admit they can’t guarantee some of it won’t end up going to Hamas to fund more terrorism.
They could try changing the subject by talking about their great plan to “fix” illegal immigration by sending billions of dollars to the corrupt governments of Central America that will surely use it altruistically to improve people’s lives. But come to think of it, that would be the same subject.
Speaking Out Against Wokeness
By Mike Huckabee
Recently, Van Morrison, Roger Daltrey and Johnny Rotten have all spoken out against the curse of “wokeness.” Now, add another name from the rock world: Sean Ono Lennon, the musician son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/24/sean-ono-lennons-scathing-takedown-of-wokeness/
He posted some very insightful comments on Twitter about how the “woke” left’s obsession with race and dividing people into oppressed and oppressors is setting back race relations and making things worse. He says he’s now getting far more racist attacks on his Japanese heritage than he did before all the “anti-racists” came in. And I love his observation about the “least interesting interesting thing”: that someone’s arbitrary birth status such as race might seem interesting at first, but once you get to know who they really are inside, it becomes the least interesting “interesting thing” about them.
If people are going to listen to celebrities on Twitter, far better that they follow Sean Ono Lennon than the “C-list celebrities” who are promoting violence against Sen. Rand Paul and his family, and yet who, remarkably, have not been banned from Twitter.
A Reader Writes Back...
Thank you Governor for blessing us with truth and honesty in the stories you put on your site. BTW,I am praying for Sarah and all the other conservatives, and republicans to win with a landslide in 2022 and 2024.
Be blessed as you continue your walk with the Lord.
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