Mark Zuckerberg
Big Tech continues to be called out for its role in interfering with the 2020 election. On Thursday, as I covered, Republican members on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Parag Agrawal about censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. Also on Thursday, Citizens United President David Bossie went on Fox News' "Hannity" to promote a new documentary, "Rigged: The Zuckerberg-Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump." Bossie will host and narrate the film, which will premiere at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 5, which is when it will also be available for download.
While tweets from those in the mainstream media, such as CNN's Jim Acosta, delight in mocking the film, Bossie has responded in kind.
More importantly, though, is that a press release for the documentary notes that the documentary relies "on the 990 forms non-profit groups must file with the Internal Revenue Service," and "traces the river of cash flowing from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to a pair of 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). CTCL received $328 million in "Zuck Bucks," while CEIR was given $69 million."
The documentary includes exclusive interviews with Trump, who expresses concerns about what he says is "a rigged election," also emphasizing that people "have to hold people accountable" for such interference. There are other interviews with other figures, however, emphasizing the deep dive involved.
The press release also features statements from key figures about just how big this project was when it comes to Zuckerberg's influence in the 2020 election:
“We’ll follow the money and uncover the startling facts behind Election 2020,” says Citizens United President David N. Bossie, who hosts and narrates Rigged. “In order to answer the question once and for all: What happened? And to ensure it never happens again.”
The “Strategist in Residence” at the Chan Zuckerberg Institute is none other than David Plouffe, President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager. Joel Benenson, the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, has also been employed by the Chan Zuckerberg Institute as an advisor. For its part, CTCL was founded by Tiana Epps-Johnson and Donny Bridges, who also worked together at the New Organizing Institute, a group labeled by The Washington Post as the “Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.”
“In my mind, they were clearly rigging the election,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says in the film. “I’m not convinced that the election was stolen on Election Day. I think the bigger story was that across the whole country for months, there was an effort to rig the election to make it virtually impossible for Trump to win.”
“$400 million is the most money any individual has ever spent to win a presidential campaign in the history of our country,” Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) says in the film.
There were roughly 2,500 grants awarded by the CTCL across the country. They have claimed that more Trump jurisdictions received grants than did Biden jurisdictions. However, records indicate that this statistic is enormously, and perhaps purposely, misleading, because of the approximately 160 grants of $400,000 or more - totaling some $270 million - an incredible 92 percent of those funds went to jurisdictions carried by Joe Biden in 2020.
The grants given to government elections offices were described as facilitating the “safe administration of public elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.” But even a cursory examination of the eventual expenditures - by outlets like NPR - shows that a tiny fraction of the money was spent on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
“This is all about the great intention of, hey, we’re gonna make it more secure,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says in Rigged. “We’re gonna make it more safe. We want to make sure that people feel comfortable coming to the poll, but that’s not what they ended up doing.”
Instead, the funds were used to increase mail-in voting and drop boxes, to hire and train poll workers, to expand voter registration efforts, and to encourage people to vote early and by mail. In short, with the huge majority of the money supporting jurisdictions won by Joe Biden, the effort amounted to an enormous get-out-the-vote campaign in key Democrat areas.
“On a locality-by-locality basis, government was not a neutral player,” says Ken Cuccinelli, National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative. “Under the banner of nonpartisan funding, it engaged in political activities, specifically get-out-the-vote activities in Democrat areas.”
“I don't think we have to blame China or voting machines,” Cleta Mitchell, a Senior Legal Fellow of the Conservative Partnership Institute/Election Integrity Project, says in the film. “I think we can look straight in the eye of Mark Zuckerberg and all these left-wing groups that infiltrated the offices with half a billion dollars. And that’s why Joe Biden won.”
The documentary will focus on the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, where there have been particular concerns about the election and vote counts there. "Rigged" will address the cash flow from CTCL and CEIR in those states, where Biden's combined margin of victory was at about 42,000 votes, and which were key in handing Biden an electoral victory and the election.
In Wisconsin, where there were lawsuits and where Trump called for a recount, Biden won 49.5 percent to Trump's 48.8 percent. In Arizona, where there were also lawsuits and recounts, Biden won 49.4 percent to Trump's 49.1 percent. And, in Georgia, which also involved lawsuits and recounts, Biden won by 49.5 percent to Trump's 49.3 percent.
As a result of such concerns with the 2020 election, Republicans at the state level have passed voter integrity legislation. Last March, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) signed SB 202 into law, and Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) earlier this week signed HB 2492 into law. Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI), though, who is up for re-election in November, has vetoed such bills that have come across his desk.
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