Message to the People; Juan O Savin talks about Supreme Court Case 22-380; Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein; Judge Declares Illinois Cashless Bail Law Is Unconstitutional; Constitutional Law Professor Issues Warning 

We the people do have the power. United we stand, divide we fall.  We need to unite and stand against the tyranny as described in the Video below.

The case described in the Video below uncovers a serious national security breach that is unique and is of first impression, and due to the serious nature of this case it involves the possible removal of a sitting President and Vice President of the United States along with members of the United States Congress, while deeming them unfit from ever holding office under Federal,
State, County or local Governments found within the United States of America, and at the same time the trial court also has the authority, to be validated by this Court, to authorize the swearing in of the legal and rightful heirs for President and Vice President of the United States. See Case 

Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. You Decide

Judge Declares Illinois Cashless Bail Law Is Unconstitutional

By Jack Phillips
December 29, 2022 Updated: December 29, 2022

An Illinois judge ruled Wednesday that parts of the state’s controversial SAFE-T act was unconstitutional just days before the cashless bail law was scheduled to take effect.

Kankakee County Circuit Court Judge Thomas W. Cunnington wrote that the Illinois state legislature “improperly attempted to amend the Constitution” and said elements of the law violate the Constitution’s separation of powers clause.

The SAFE-T Act, originally passed in January 2021, changes how courts handle criminal defendants and attempted to abolish cash bail.

The judge, in siding with the plaintiffs, found that “had the legislature wanted to change the provisions in the Constitution regarding eliminating monetary bail … they should have submitted the question on the ballot to the electorate at a general election,” adding that courts had their abilities “stripped away” by the legislature.

Further, Cunnington wrote that “declaratory judgment is proper in this case and that plaintiffs have met their burden to show to this court that [the SAFE-T Act] as they relate only to the pretrial release provisions are facially unconstitutional.” For the cash bail part of the law, he wrote it “will likely lead to delays in cases, increased workloads, expenditures of additional funds, and in some cases, an inability to obtain defendant’s appearance in court,” adding that it “that these likely injuries occasioned by the enforcement of an unconstitutional law, are cognizable injuries which provide constitutional standing to plaintiff State’s Attorneys.”

The suit was filed against Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Senate President Donald Harmon, and Speaker of the House Christopher Welch, according to a news release from the Office of the Kankakee County State’s Attorney, one of the lead plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit. Raoul said in a statement the state will appeal the ruling to the Illinois Supreme Court.

“Today’s ruling affirms that we are still a government of the people, and that the Constitutional protections afforded to the citizens of Illinois–most importantly the right to exercise our voice with our vote–are inalienable,” Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe said in a statement after the ruling Wednesday.

Raoul, a Democrat, said that the Illinois Supreme Court will now have to “definitively resolve this challenge to the pretrial release portions of the SAFE-T Act” because Pritzker, the legislative leaders, and others “intend to appeal the circuit court’s decision directly to the Illinois Supreme Court, where we will ask the court to reverse the circuit court’s decision.”

Pritzker called the ruling a “setback” and declared that Illinois’ “antiquated criminal justice system” needs to be replaced with “a system rooted in equity and fairness.”

“We cannot and should not defend a system that fails to keep people safe by allowing those who are a threat to their community the ability to simply buy their way out of jail,” he said. “I thank the Attorney General for his work on this case and look forward to the Illinois Supreme Court taking up the appeal as soon as possible.”

About 64 counties that signed onto the complaint will not have the bail portion of the SAFE-T act go into effect in the state. Other provisions of the law such as bodycamera mandates for police departments, training mandates, and more will go into effect Jan. 1, according to local media reports.

Before the lawsuit was filed, some Republican state leaders sounded the alarm about the SAFE-T act, arguing that it would lead to a rapid increase in violent crime across Illinois and Chicago, a city that frequently sees more than 700 homicides each year. As of Dec. 1, 2022, Chicago officials recorded about 630 murders, while in 2021, the city recorded more than 800.

Jack Phillips

Jack Phillips is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in New York. He covers breaking news.

Constitutional Law Professor Issues Warning After FBI Criticizes ‘Conspiracy Theorists’

By Jack Phillips
December 28, 2022 Updated: December 29, 2022

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley sounded the alarm over the FBI’s recent statement decrying “conspiracy theorists” and “disinformation” after recent installments of the “Twitter Files” revealed that agents were in constant communication with Twitter.

A spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News, in response to several “Twitter Files” installments, said that “conspiracy theorists” are “feeding the American public misinformation” and said they are trying to discredit the bureau and its agents.

That statement, Turley told Fox News, is “disturbing” because the FBI has allegedly “attacked many of us who were raising free speech concerns and called all of us collectively ‘conspiracy theorists spreading disinformation.’

“It was highly inappropriate, because the FBI has said that combatting disinformation is one of its priorities. So, it is a very menacing thing when you have the largest law enforcement agency attacking free speech advocates,” Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University who served as an expert witness during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, told the outlet.

With the reporting around the Twitter Files, Turley noted that new owner Elon Musk “has confirmed that the FBI paid social media companies to help them deal with what they called disinformation, which most of us call censorship.”

“But also that they were in continuous communication, as were other agencies, targeting specific citizens and specific posters to be banned or suspended,” Turley said, referring to disclosures from the files. “That really does smack of an agency relationship and that could violate the first amendment.”

What Happened

The FBI made its statement to Fox News after several journalists posted screenshots of messages showing how FBI agents communicated with top Twitter officials, namely about potential reports about Hunter Biden.

“What I quickly put together is a pattern where it appears that FBI agents, along with former FBI agents within the company, were engaged in a disinformation campaign aimed at top Twitter and Facebook executives, as well as at top news organization executives to basically prepare them, prime them, get them set up to dismiss Hunter Biden information when it would be released,” journalist Michael Shellenberger wrote.

Elon Musk
Elon Musk arrives at the justice center in Wilmington, Del., on July 13, 2021. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)

Another email, dated only last month, showed FBI agent Elvis Chan forwarding a message from the agency’s National Election Command Post to Twitter regarding 25 accounts that were allegedly spreading “misinformation about the upcoming election” on Nov. 8. Days later, the FBI’s San Francisco field office flagged four accounts to Twitter they believed “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy,” according to files released by journalist Matt Taibbi that was shared by Musk on Twitter.

In another disclosure this month, one Twitter executive appeared to express alarm over the FBI’s pressure.  “They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff),” Carlos Monje wrote in January 2020.

Reports have indicated that a number of Big Tech companies have hired retired FBI agents and former intelligence officials. Twitter was no different, having hired former FBI general counsel James Baker, who was recently “exited” by Musk in early December amid reports that he was secretly “vetting” files that were accessed by Taibbi, Shellenberger, and other journalists.

When reached for comment, the FBI also said those messages between the bureau and Twitter show “nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding, and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.”

But Turley, in an opinion article, said that “it is not clear what is more chilling—the menacing role played by the FBI in Twitter’s censorship program, or its mendacious response to the disclosure of that role” before he called for reforms at the bureau.

“After Watergate, there was bipartisan support for reforming the FBI and intelligence agencies. Today, that cacophony of voices has been replaced by crickets, as much of the media imposes another effective blackout on coverage of the Twitter Files,” he said. “This media silence suggests that the FBI found the ‘sweet spot’ on censorship, supporting the views of the political and media establishment.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the FBI for comment.

Jack Phillips

Jack Phillips is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in New York. He covers breaking news.

Trump Releases Dramatic Political Video After FBI Raids Mar-a-Lago; The World Is Not As It Seems

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas, on Aug. 6, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Trump Releases Dramatic Political Video After FBI Raids Mar-a-Lago

By Caden Pearson
August 10, 2022 Updated: August 10, 2022

Former President Donald Trump released a dramatic political video, hours after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, in which he laments the “declining” state of America and says it’s “time to start talking about greatness for our country again.”

“We are a nation in decline … We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump over the ominous sounds of thunder and rain in the nearly four-minute video in which he lists the apparent failures of the Biden administration, before promising, “Soon we will have greatness again.”

Trump, who is expected to announce that he will run again for president in 2024, released the video on his Truth Social platform late Tuesday.

In the video, he says that America has the “highest inflation in over 40 years” and “highest energy cost in its history.” He adds that in the two years since President Joe Biden took office, America has lost its energy independence and dominance.

“We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for oil,” Trump says. “We are a nation that surrendered in Afghanistan, leaving behind dead soldiers and American citizens and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment in the world.”

Trump accuses the Biden administration of allowing “Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands,” and suggests that “it will only get worse.”

‘Weaponization of the Justice System’

“We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We’ve never seen anything like this,” Trump says in his video.

Late on Monday, Trump announced that the FBI was raiding his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, calling it evidence of “prosecutorial misconduct” and a “weaponization of the Justice System.”

Mar-a-Lago
A member of the Secret Service in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)

The former president said the raid wasn’t announced and that it was motivated because Democrats do not want him to run again for president in 2024.

“They detest Donald Trump, not just on the Democrat side but the general establishment, because he’s not one of them. Because he doesn’t play their game,” his daughter-in-law Lara Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.

“They are terrified he’s going to announce any day that he’s running for president in 2024. And this is a very convenient way to just throw a little more mud on Donald Trump.”

America ‘No Longer Respected’

In his video, Trump also cites the legacy media as contributing to what he says is a nation in decline, saying America “no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get.”

Traditionally, the media acts as a guardian of the public interest and a watchdog on government activities. But Trump has in the past accused legacy outlets of being partisan and colluding with “radical left Democrats … to hide the real facts.”

“We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon and China to use the trillions and trillions of dollars it’s taken from the United States to build a military to rival our own,” Trump says in the video.

Epoch Times Photo
U.S. Air Force loadmasters and pilots assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, load people being evacuated from Afghanistan onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 24, 2021. (Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Force via AP)

“We are a nation that over the past years is no longer respected or listened to all around the world. We are a nation that is hostile to liberty and freedom and faith.

“We are a nation whose economy is floundering, whose stores are not stocked, whose deliveries are not coming, and whose educational system is ranked at the bottom of every list,” he says.

“We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump. “But soon we will have greatness again.”

‘Soon We Will Have Greatness Again’

Trump’s political video starts in black and white with only the sounds of rain and thunder underscoring it. This sequence features video representative of the Biden administration’s apparent failures, including oil fields, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, the last third of the video becomes colorized and the musical score uplifting as Trump shifts to speak about his promise of America having “greatness again.”

“It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country. And it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country,” Trumps says in his video.

“There is no mountain we cannot climb. There is no summit we cannot reach. There is no challenge we cannot meet. There is no victory we cannot have.

“We will not bend. We will not break. We will not yield ever, ever, ever. We will never give in, we will never give up, and we will never ever back down. We will never let you down.

“As long as we are confident and united the tyrants we’re fighting do not stand even a little chance. Because we are Americans and Americans kneel to God and God alone. And it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again,” he says.

The video ends on a black screen with the words, “The best is yet to come.”



 Judge who signed off the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion donated $2,000 to Barack Obama’s campaign and represented Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express pilots, his scheduler and ‘Yugoslavian sex slave’

Bruce Reinhart (pictured) acted for several employees of the billionaire pedophile (right) before he sanctioned the 'unannounced' search on Mar-a-Lago yesterdayThe Florida judge who signed off the FBI raid on Donald Trump‘s mansion represented Jeffrey Epstein‘s workers, it has been revealed.

Bruce Reinhart acted for several employees of the billionaire pedophile before he sanctioned the ‘unannounced’ search on Mar-a-Lago yesterday.

He left the local US Attorney’s office over a decade ago to set up a private practice and help staff members including his Lolita Express pilots and his scheduler.

He was accused in a lawsuit of breaking the Justice Department’s policies by using information from his previous job to benefit in the private sector,Epstein which he denied.

Meanwhile Reinhart was also revealed to have donated to Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 and Jeb Bush’s when he ran against Trump in 2015.

The FBI searched Trump’s estate as part of a probe into whether he took classified records from the White House to his Florida mansion.

The ex-president revealed the raid in a lengthy statement and said the Feds broke into a safe at his home as they hunted the documents.

The agents are reported to have seized 15 boxes worth of classified information but have not commented on what they contained.

Bruce Reinhart (pictured) acted for several employees of the billionaire pedophile (right) before he sanctioned the 'unannounced' search on Mar-a-Lago yesterday

 Sources told the New York Post Reinhart approved the FBI warrant that let them ransack the Florida mansion yesterday morning.

Agents had filed two requests with the federal magistrate in West Palm Beach before the search was carried out.

The office is made up of three judges – William Matthewman, Ryon McCabe and Reinhart, who was assigned the cases.

The two warrant applications entered the system on Monday but do not disclose that Trump was the target.

Reinhart was made a magistrate judge four years ago after spending 10 years in the private sector where he worked with Epstein’s staff.

Pictured: Pilot Larry Visoski in the cockpit of Epstein's Gulfstream G550. He was represented by Reinhart

Pilot David Rodgers was another the pilots to be represented by Reinhart

He helped the billionaire pedophile’s pilots Larry Visoski, David Rodgers, Larry Morrison and Bill Hammond.

He also worked with scheduler Sarah Kellen and Nadia Marcinkova, who was known as his ‘Yugoslavian sex slave’.He helped the billionaire pedophile's pilots, scheduler Sarah Kellen and who he called his 'Yugoslavian sex slave' Nadia Marcinkova (pictured)

On New Year’s Day 2008 he left his job at the South Florida US Attorney’s Office and went to work with the employees the next day.

His official biography says he ‘managed a docket that covered the full spectrum of federal crimes, including narcotics, violent crimes, public corruption, financial frauds, child pornography and immigration’.

Reinhart was hauled over the coals in a 2011 Crime Victims’ Rights Act lawsuit which accused him of violating Justice Department policies by switching sides.

It implied the attorney had leveraged inside information about the probe into Epstein’s affairs to gain favor with him.

He flatly denied this and said he was nothing to do with the team that was looking into the pedophile’s horrific crimes.

But two years later his former supervisors in the US Attorney’s Office said ‘while Bruce E Reinhart was an assistant U.S. attorney, he learned confidential, non-public information about the Epstein matter’.

He hit back in 2018, telling the Miami Herald: ‘Even assuming I had participated ”personally and substantially” in the Epstein investigation [which I did not], the relevant Department of Justice regulations only prohibited me from communicating with, or appearing before, the United States on behalf of Mr. Epstein.’

He made clear in the statement he had represented the disgraced financier’s workers but had nothing to do with him – yet would not say who paid for them.

But in Newsmax appearances, he appeared to shrug off accusations against Epstein and his workers.

It also emerged today Reinhart donated to Obama’s campaign twice in 2008 totaling $2,000, as well as to Trump rival Bush in 2015.

It also emerged today Reinhart donated to Obama’s campaign twice in 2008 totaling $2,000, as well as to Trump rival Jeb Bush in 2015

In Newsmax appearances, he appeared to shrug off accusations against Epstein and his workers
Reinhart

In Newsmax appearances, he appeared to shrug off accusations against Epstein and his workers

The search on Trump’s house intensifies the probe into how classified documents ended up in boxes of White House records located at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year.

It occurs amid a separate grand jury probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and adds to the potential legal peril for Trump.

Trump and his allies sought to cast the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to keep him from a 2024 bid.

This is despite the White House saying it had no prior knowledge of it and that FBI director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump five years ago.

Trump wrote: ‘These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.’

He said: ‘Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.’

‘After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.’

Justice Department spokesman Dena Iverson declined to comment on the search, including about whether AG Merrick Garland had personally authorized it.

Trump did not elaborate on the basis for the search but the Justice Department has been investigating the potential mishandling of classified information.

It comes after the National Archives and Records Administration said it had received from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, earlier this year.

The National Archives said Trump should have turned over that material upon leaving office, and it asked the Justice Department to investigate.

There are multiple federal laws governing the handling of classified records and sensitive government documents, including statutes that make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorized location.

Though a search warrant does not suggest that criminal charges are near or even expected, federal officials looking to obtain one must first demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause that a crime occurred.

Two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the search happened earlier Monday and was related to the records probe.

Agents were also looking to see if Trump had additional presidential records or any classified documents at the estate.

Trump has previously maintained that presidential records were turned over ‘in an ordinary and routine process.’

His son Eric said on Fox News on Monday night he had spent the day with his father and the search happened because ‘the National Archives wanted to corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession’.

Asked how the documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago, Eric said the boxes were among items that got moved out of the White House during ‘six hours’ on Inauguration Day.

He said: ‘My father always kept press clippings. He had boxes, when he moved out of the White House.’

Trump emerged from Trump Tower in New York City shortly before 8 pm and waved to bystanders before being driven away in an SUV.

n his first public remarks since news of the search surfaced, Trump made no mention of it during a tele-town hall on behalf of Leora Levy, the Connecticut Republican he has endorsed in Tuesday´s US Senate primary to pick a general election opponent against Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal.

Trump gave his public backing to Levy late last week, calling her on Monday the best pick ‘to replace Connecticut´s joke of a senator.’

But in a social media post he called the search a ‘weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don´t want me to run for President in 2024’.

GOP National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel denounced the search as ‘outrageous’ and said it was a reason for voters to turn out in November.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate, said it was ‘an escalation in the weaponization’ of US government agencies.

Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, said in a tweet that the Justice Department ‘has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization’ and said that if Republicans win control of the U.S. House, they will investigate the department.

That Trump would become entangled in a probe into the handling of classified information is all the more striking given how he tried during the 2016 presidential election to exploit an FBI investigation into his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton over whether she mishandled classified information via a private email server she used as secretary of state.

Then-FBI Director James Comey concluded Clinton had sent and received classified information but the FBI did not recommend criminal charges because it determined Clinton had not intended to break the law.

Trump lambasted that decision and then stepped up his criticism of the FBI as agents began investigating whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election.

He fired Comey during that probe, and though he appointed Wray months later, he repeatedly criticized him too as president.

Thomas Schwartz, a Vanderbilt University history professor who studies and writes about the presidency, said there is no precedent for a former president facing an FBI raid – even going back to Watergate. Source

Hanging at Nuremberg; Pentagon Child Porn Ring; Misinformation About Kyle Rittenhouse Case Floods Social Media, TV Networks

Mercola.com

COVID Shots Are the Deadliest ‘Vaccines’ in Medical History

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Data suggest 1 in 317 boys aged 16 to 17 will get myocarditis from the COVID shots, and after a third booster, that number may be even higher
  • VAERS reporting is likely underreported by a factor of 41. Since there are over 8,000 domestic deaths reported to VAERS, and 98% of those deaths are “excess deaths,” this suggests that as many as 300,000 Americans may have died from the COVID shots thus far
  • Calculations based on government data from 35% of the world’s population suggest we’re killing approximately 411 people per million doses on average. Moderna and Pfizer are both two-dose regimens, which pushes this to 822 deaths per million fully vaccinated. And that’s just the short-term mortality. We still have no concept of how these shots might impact mortality and morbidity in the longer term
  • An Italian investigation found that if the COVID mortality definition were changed to only include those cases where there were no preexisting comorbidities, the mortality from COVID comes out to just 2.9% of the overall reported number. This suggests that if a COVID death was redefined to being a death actually “from” COVID rather than “with” COVID, the death count could be substantially smaller than 760,000 deaths and may be smaller than the number killed by the vaccines
  • The deadliest vaccine ever made is the smallpox vaccine, which killed 1 in 1 million vaccinated people. The COVID shots kills 822 per million fully vaccinated, making it more than 800 times deadlier than the deadliest vaccine in human history

Child Porn Ring Uninvestigated – Anderson Cooper & Senator Grassley


A viral image has been resurfaced by The Sun newspaper showing a ‘private’ audience moment at the Vatican from 2003.

A grinning Jeffrey Epstein is alongside Ghislaine Maxwell while they are being blessed by the head of the Catholic church.



Misinformation About Kyle Rittenhouse Case Floods Social Media, TV Networks

November 21, 2021 Updated: November 22, 2021

Kyle Rittenhouse shot three black men. Kyle Rittenhouse  traveled across state lines with a gun. Kyle Rittenhouse had an AK-47.

These are three examples of false information being spread about Rittenhouse, whose trial ended last week with his acquittal.

Prominent influencers, including lawmakers and reporters, are sources of some of the misinformation—possibly disinformation—leaving experts troubled.

On CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, reporter Mark Strassman falsely said Rittenhouse “drove in from Illinois armed for battle.” On CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” on Friday, Harvard University professor Cornell William Brooks falsely said Rittenhouse was carrying an AK-47. The Independent falsely reported late last week that Rittenhouse shot three black men.

Rittenhouse, 17 years old at the time, shot three men, two fatally, with an AR-15 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 25, 2020. All were white, as is Rittenhouse. The gun was bought by a friend and was picked up by the teenager, who resided in Illinois, from a home in Kenosha.

Rittenhouse claimed self-defense and the jury agreed, clearing him of all charges after video footage and witness testimony during the trial showed he was attacked by all of the men he shot.

“As soon as the Rittenhouse situation happened in Kenosha, the establishment media immediately created a narrative that would work with their particular, preferred narrative. As we now know, that led to a good many mischaracterizations and errors at that time,” Jeffrey McCall, a communications professor at DePauw University, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“By now, those media outlets are so committed to that narrative that they can’t drag themselves to correct previous errors or provide accurate details today. This not only reflects that some media outlets work with predetermined, ideological narratives, but that they are also too lazy to report facts as provided in the actual trial,” he added.

Ryan Chittum, a former journalist, and media critic with the Columbia Journalism Review, said that some of the legacy news outlets have done excellent journalism on the Rittenhouse case, including the New Yorker, “but it’s been like a few drops in a firehouse of tendentious, false, and often malicious press coverage intended to fit an ideological narrative.”

“On balance, the press has been a destructive force on this story, from its beginnings in the coverage of the Jacob Blake shooting that set the whole thing off and which we know was justified, to the downplaying of the $50 million in destruction done by rioters in Kenosha, to the libelous portrayal of Rittenhouse and the particulars of what happened,” he told The Epoch Times in a Twitter message. “There have been innumerable journalistic disasters in the Trump era, but this is the most blatantly reckless one of them all.”

Rittenhouse shot the men during riots that followed a police officer shooting Jacob Blake in the same city.

Blake was armed with a knife. Video footage showed he resisted arrest after visiting the home of an ex-girlfriend who had previously accused him of sexual assault. Prosecutors decided not to charge the officer in January because he appeared to act in self-defense and the Department of Justice last month announced it was closing a probe and filing no charges. The sexual assault charge was dropped last year.

Blake survived the shooting, though he is partially paralyzed. Some people falsely said last week that he died, including ESPN’s Jalen Rose and ABC’s Terry Moran.

“I misspoke and quickly corrected myself, on the air, as soon as I could. I apologize for the error,” Moran wrote on Twitter.

Jacob Blake
In this social network video released by his lawyer Ben Crump, Jacob Blake delivers a message from a hospital bed in Kenosha, Wis., on Sept. 5, 2020. (Attorney Crump Twitter account/AFP via Getty Images)

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, claimed Blake died and that he was unarmed.

The committee later sent out an updated statement from Maloney. “Apologies,” Chris Hayden, its communication director, wrote on Twitter.

The Maloney statement stood out to Jeffrey Blevins, a professor in the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Journalism who is working on a book about how misinformation is spread.

“I think a lot of times the political left tend to think that false information, fake news, misinformation, is something that is only attributable to the political right. And that’s just simply not the case,” Blevins told The Epoch Times.

While people with small followings may put forth misinformation, much more damage is done when higher-profile influencers such as lawmakers do.

“When we think about influencers—and politicians fit into this category, certainly the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—their official account would be seen as a credible source,” he said. “When they put something out like this, it tends to stick with people’s minds.”

The false claims have had the potential to reach tens of millions of people on Twitter, where they were spread far and wide. The ESPN, CBS, CNN, and ABC shows combined have millions of viewers.

Among those falling prey to the misinformation or dubious claims were two professors who have been cited by media outlets as experts in identifying it.

Lisa Fazio, a Vanderbilt psychology professor, shared a video of Amber Ruffin, who has her own show on NBC, making multiple false or evidence-free claims, including the assertion that Rittenhouse brought a rifle across state lines. That video has been watched over 7.7 million times since Nov. 19, getting boosted by the likes of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

Shannon McGregor, a professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, shared a tweet that called Rittenhouse “openly white supremacist,” a claim that has no evidence supporting it.

Blevins said the situation reminds him of what happened in 2019 when a brief, tightly edited video clip from Washington was disseminated widely by media and others.

Nick Sandmann, a Kentucky high school student, was in the nation’s capital with classmates. The clip was used to falsely state Sandmann confronted a Native American, Nathan Phillips, but video footage that later emerged showed the exact opposite was the case. Many media outlets issued corrections, and some paid Sandmann to settle defamation lawsuits.

The person who initially posted the clip had a small following, but it was widely spread, Blevins noted.

“People seem to be so eager to bring their hot take to social media, which is probably what happened in this case, and then you miss important pieces of context, and it can really do some damage,” he said.

Blevins encouraged people to be more cautious, recalling what he did when the clip initially emerged. He waited, instead of sharing it or posting about it, knowing that in the past unconfirmed material was spread wildly but was later shown to be incorrect.

CBS couldn’t be reached. ESPN declined to comment. Twitter, CNN, Brooks, The Independent, Fazio, McGregor, and Omar did not respond to requests for comment.

Zachary Stieber

REPORTER
Zachary Stieber covers U.S. news, including politics and court cases. He started at The Epoch Times as a New York City metro reporter.
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