Connect with us

West

Hawaii bill that could boot Trump from ballot narrowly advances

Published

on

Hawaii bill that could boot Trump from ballot narrowly advances

Join Fox News for access to this content

Plus get unlimited access to thousands of articles, videos and more with your free account!

Please enter a valid email address.

By entering your email, you are agreeing to Fox News Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive. To access the content, check your email and follow the instructions provided.

A bill in Hawaii’s state legislature that could potentially keep former President Donald Trump off of the 2024 presidential ballot narrowly survived a procedural vote on Tuesday.

The Hawaii State Senate Judiciary Committee approved Senate Bill 2392 by a single vote, moving the bill to the full floor, HawaiiNewsNow reported. The proposal would place the decision to potentially disqualify Trump under the chief elections officer.

Advertisement

Advocates for the bill claimed Trump’s involvement in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, amounted to an insurrection that should bar him from running for — or winning — the presidency.

The bill comes as several other states have initiated efforts to prevent Trump, the current Republican front-runner, from appearing on the ballot in November.

TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, BUT HALEY LOSES NEVADA’S REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY

Advocates for the bill claimed former President Donald Trump’s involvement in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, amounted to an insurrection. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Despite the bill clearing the procedural hurdle, the bill’s critics have been more outspoken than its supporters.

Advertisement

“This is tyrannical, to say the least,” said Jamie Detwiler, a resident who testified ahead of the vote, per the report. “He has not been convicted nor has he been charged with insurrection (cheers) there is no evidence of committing insurrection so please don’t waste our time on this poorly written piece of legislation.”

According to HawaiiNewsNow, the bill drew over 300 complaints or negative testimonies, with only about 20 favoring it.

Hawaii State Capitol

Senate Bill 2392 cleared the Hawaii State Senate committee by a 3-2 vote. (Rolf Schulten/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Sen. Karl Rhoads, a Democrat, introduced the legislation as Hawaii does not have a legal process to exempt candidates from the ballot or disqualify them from appearing.

TRUMP NOT IMMUNE FROM PROSECUTION IN 2020 ELECTION CASE, FEDERAL APPEALS COURT RULES

Senate Bill 2392, which cleared the committee by a 3-2 vote, would establish such a process.

Advertisement

A description of the bill says it “specifies that election ballots issued by the chief election officer or county clerk shall exclude any candidate who is disqualified by a constitutional or statutory provision.”

It also “provides for a process for challenging an inclusion or exclusion of a candidate from a ballot. Includes a candidate’s disqualification as grounds for an election contest complaint. Specifies that electors of presidential and vice presidential candidates shall not be individuals who are disqualified by a constitutional or statutory provision. Prohibits electors from voting for any presidential or vice presidential nominee who has been disqualified pursuant to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

vote stickers

Senate Bill 2392 “specifies that election ballots issued by the chief election officer or county clerk shall exclude any candidate who is disqualified by a constitutional or statutory provision,” a description of the bill says. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

The bill is supported by the state’s Democratic Party.

Rhoads is a member of the Judiciary Committee, the Agriculture and Environment and the Public Safety Committee and the Intergovernmental and Military Affairs Committee.

Advertisement

Read the full article from Here

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Washington

Trump ally who denies 2020 election results threatens law enforcement

Published

on

Trump ally who denies 2020 election results threatens law enforcement


Patrick Byrne, who has funded efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election, said in an online forum Thursday that law enforcement would face “a piano wire and a blowtorch” if they did not drop a case against an ally.

Byrne, a former CEO of online retailer Overstock, used the phrase half a dozen times Thursday as he participated in a nearly three-hour-long event on X Spaces. His remarks came amid heightened worries about political violence, and he acknowledged during the event that his references to strangling or blowtorching officials were threatening and could be considered felonies. On Friday, he downplayed his comments, saying he had been speaking metaphorically and is committed to peace.

The “Cyber Crisis: Saving Tina Peters” event was aimed at rallying support for the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., who faces charges accusing her of tampering with election equipment three years ago. Peters has pleaded not guilty, and her case goes to trial next week.

Byrne called out law enforcement and prosecutors during the forum, saying they would face violence if they did not drop the case.

Advertisement

“If you have any brains at all, which I’m not sure they do, they should be throwing in the towel and just surrendering and dropping this case against Tina because those who don’t are going to end up facing a piano wire and a blowtorch before this is over if I have anything to do with it,” Byrne said. “So I know that’s probably another felony, but f— it — threatening them like that — but there we are.”

Byrne, who said he was participating in the event from Azerbaijan, accused law enforcement of committing treason and claimed he had been hacking Venezuela’s government for two years.

“I don’t care how many felonies I’ve committed, and I don’t care that I’m committing felonies by threatening you,” he said of law enforcement. “You folks do your job or when this is over, the folks who are part of this are going to be facing, you know, piano wire and blowtorches before this is over. So you start doing your job and stop worrying about me.”

Byrne said Friday that his comments were “obviously a metaphor.”

“Please be aware that my turns of phrase like that are metaphoric expressions,” he said by text message. “There’s been no one more committed to peaceful resolution of this than I.”

Advertisement

He said his views on peace do not extend to people like former ambassador Manuel Rocha, who pleaded guilty this year to serving as a secret agent for Cuba for decades. “The only exception to peaceful resolution will be for any who turn out of Cuba and Venezuela, such as ambassador Rocha,” Byrne said by text message.

Byrne noted it was 4 a.m. in Azerbaijan when he participated in the event on X, and he may not have spoken as carefully as he otherwise would.

Spokespeople for the Colorado attorney general’s office and Mesa County district attorney’s office did not immediately comment Friday.

Byrne’s comments come three-and-a-half months ahead of the presidential election, as scholars, law enforcement agencies and election administrators raise alarms about the risk of political violence. Election officials have faced an onslaught of threats and harassment since the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob chanting about Donald Trump’s false election claims.

Two weeks ago, Trump was injured during an assassination attempt that left one of his supporters dead at a rally in Butler, Pa. The violence fueled new warnings of the risk to public officials and ordinary Americans, regardless of their political views.

Advertisement

Before today’s combustible political environment, the phrases Byrne used might have prompted outreach by authorities to advise against using such language, said Paul Charlton, a former U.S. attorney under President George W. Bush. These days, state and federal officials tend to take such talk more seriously. Byrne’s language, he said, “sounds not only like a threat but a confession and an acknowledgment that it could be a felony to make such a threat.”

Words alone can be sufficient to prosecute threats against public officials if authorities can show proof of intent to do harm, he said.

“That is an instance in which, in my mind, it is very much worth law enforcement’s attention,” Charlton said.

Byrne’s repeated references to the Peters trial — and the prosecutors involved in it — are important aspects of his overall comments, said Carol Lam, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California who was also appointed by Bush.

“Because he references a specific trial and he’s talking about the people who are bringing the case, that should be very troubling to law enforcement,” she said. Even if he said he was speaking metaphorically, she added, “What does that matter if someone went out and bought piano wire at his suggestion?”

Advertisement

Two hours after The Washington Post contacted Byrne, he posted a statement on X that reiterated what he told a reporter about meaning his comments metaphorically. He said he wanted people to remain peaceful, but added information would come out that would “test our ability to remain peaceful and my ability to contribute to that cause.”

Byrne used this week’s online forum to argue for dropping the charges against Peters, who is accused of participating in a scheme to allow a purported data expert to secretly copy files from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in 2021. She faces seven felonies and three misdemeanors in a case that is scheduled to go to trial on Wednesday.

He has long championed Peters and others who have questioned the results of the 2020 election. Four days after members of the electoral college voted to give Biden a victory in December 2020, Byrne joined other Trump allies in the Oval Office to argue Trump could use the National Guard to seize voting machines. Also in the meeting were Trump-aligned attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

In the years since, Byrne has used his fortune and his nonprofit America Project to bankroll efforts meant to uncover problems with how elections are run, including a partisan review of the 2020 election in Arizona. Byrne and the America Project have helped fund groups like We the People Ariz. Alliance, an Arizona-based political action committee whose co-founder in March said she would “lynch” a Republican official who helps oversee elections in the state’s largest county. She later said her comment was a joke.

Courts and independent agencies have found no evidence of widespread election fraud.

Advertisement

Byrne led Overstock for two decades. He resigned in 2019 after it came to light that he had been romantically involved with Maria Butina, a Russian gun activist who pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring with a Russian official to infiltrate conservative politics in the United States. She was deported after serving a 15-month prison sentence. Byrne published a memoir this year that included a preface by Butina.

Dominion, the voting machine company, filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Byrne in 2021. The case is ongoing. Dominion won settlements of $787.5 million with Fox News and $243 million with Newsmax and is seeking $1 billion or more from Giuliani, Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Spencer S. Hsu and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Wyoming

Wyoming Highway Patrol celebrates K-9 Reno’s career

Published

on

Wyoming Highway Patrol celebrates K-9 Reno’s career


The Wyoming Highway Patrol proudly announces the retirement of K-9 Reno, a Labrador Retriever who served faithfully for four years. Beginning her career with the WHP in 2021, K-9 Reno was assigned to Troop A in Laramie County.

K-9 Reno, a single-purpose drug detection canine, was purchased with 100% Federal HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) funds. She was the first K-9 in Wyoming, and one of the first in the country, to be trained and certified on fentanyl.

During her career, K-9 Reno completed over 648 hours of training. She was deployed 234 times and was responsible for the seizure of:

  • 3,625 pounds of marijuana
  • 24 1/2 pounds of fentanyl
  • 13 1/2 pounds of methamphetamine
  • 29 grams of cocaine
  • 41 grams of heroin
  • 1 pound of other types of drugs, including illicit pharmaceuticals
  • $25,265 of drug proceeds
  • 5 firearms

Trooper JT Dellos, K-9 Reno’s handler, praised her contributions saying K-9 Reno played an integral role in apprehending many high-level criminals engaged in trafficking dangerous drugs into our communities. She benefitted the citizens and visitors of Wyoming due to her significant contributions.

K-9 Reno’s work included several notable deployments. On Feb. 12, 2022, K-9 Reno participated in an “open air sniff” at the Red Lion Hotel, leading to the arrest of Timothy J. Pearson for felony possession of 36 pounds of marijuana. Reno’s alert was helped in discovering the drugs, packaged in vacuum-sealed bags in the trunk of Pearson’s vehicle.

Advertisement

“I initiated a free air sniff around a motor vehicle with my narcotic odor detector K-9, Reno. I previously observed the black-in-color sedan, bearing Florida registration on Interstate 80, traveling eastbound. I ultimately discovered the vehicle in the parking lot of the Red Lion Hotel, Cheyenne, Wyoming. After discovering the unoccupied vehicle, I deployed Reno around the exterior of the vehicle. Reno alerted to the presence of one of the four odors she is trained to detect,” the probable cause statement reads.

In a very busy day on Oct. 18, 2023, K-9 Reno was there for a traffic stop on Ames Avenue. Allan Jericho Housman and Danielle Alyssa Smith were charged with possession of methamphetamine after Reno alerted to their vehicle. Troopers found a small metal container with 40 grams of suspected methamphetamine.

A booking sheet states Smith pleaded with the trooper to let them go since they lived “just up there.” The trooper became suspicious of criminal activity, which led to K-9 Reno being deployed on their vehicle. After an alert by Reno, troopers searched the vehicle and found a small metal container with 40 grams of suspected methamphetamine.

Additionally, K-9 Reno played a role in another traffic stop on Interstate 80. Troopers discovered 13.7 pounds of suspected marijuana, 18 pounds of suspected THC wax, and other controlled substances in a vehicle driven by Brandon Tyler Espe and Curtis Barnes. Reno’s alert provided the probable cause needed for the search and subsequent arrests.

The trooper reported smelling marijuana in their vehicle after approaching to ask Espe, the driver, for his license. Espe reportedly did not have his license, instead producing a state identification card. Espe joined the trooper in the front of the patrol vehicle. The trooper deployed K-9 Reno, who alerted to the presence of drugs. Searching the vehicle, the trooper reportedly found 6,230 grams, or 13.7 pounds, of suspected marijuana; 8,190 grams, or 18 pounds, of suspected THC wax; 980 grams, or 2.16 pounds, of suspected THC liquid; 7 grams of suspected methamphetamine; and less than 1 gram of suspected cocaine.

Advertisement

K-9 Reno was known for her skills and dedication. She loved coming to work and drew crowds with her sweet face and joyful presence. Her sweet face and joyful presence drew a crowd anywhere she went, and she loved showing off her skills at public events and in classrooms the announcment states.

The WHP expressed gratitude for K-9 Reno’s service. “The WHP is grateful for the dedicated service of K-9 Reno to the citizens and visitors of Wyoming, and wishes her a well-deserved retirement full of tennis balls and laying in the sun.”



Source link

Continue Reading

West

IOC pushes Utah officials, US Olympic leaders to persuade FBI to drop WADA probe as part of 2034 Games deal

Published

on

IOC pushes Utah officials, US Olympic leaders to persuade FBI to drop WADA probe as part of 2034 Games deal

The International Committee (IOC) on Wednesday pushed Utah officials to end an FBI investigation into an alleged doping coverup involving the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and Chinese swimmers as it celebrated Salt Lake City as the host of the 2034 Winter Games.

The entire deal for Salt Lake City to get the Games was contingent on Utah officials, including Gov. Spencer Cox, and U.S. Olympic leaders to lobby federal authorities to get the investigation dropped – a probe that has been the talk among American Olympic swimmers for weeks.

The IOC added a clause in the contract demanding the termination of the probe. 

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox speaks about Salt Lake City’s bid to host the 2034 Winter Olympics, on Wednesday, July 24, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Advertisement

“That was the only way that we could guarantee that we would get the Games,” Cox said after the announcement, adding that if the U.S. doesn’t respect the “supreme authority” of WADA then “they can withdraw the Games from us.”

The scandal broke out months before Olympians splashed down into the pool.

It was revealed in the spring that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned heart medication before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and were still allowed by WADA to compete. Five of the swimmers went on to win medals, including two gold. Eleven of the swimmers who tested positive ahead of Tokyo are set to compete in Paris.

WADA then cleared itself of any wrongdoing in handling the case involving the Chinese swimmers. A special prosecutor, appointed by the agency, determined that WADA’s decision not to punish the Chinese athletes was “reasonable” and didn’t show favoritism.

2024 PARIS OLYMPICS: EVERYTHING TO KNOW ABOUT THIS YEAR’S SUMMER GAMES

Advertisement

WADA President Witold Banka said the special prosecutor’s investigation confirmed “that there was no impropriety connected to WADA’s handling of the case.”

Lindsey Vonn in July 2024

Former U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn takes a selfie with the Salt Lake City delegation after the IOC formally awarded the 2034 Winter Games to the United States, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, in Paris. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

He said WADA’s next step would be to meet with outside legal counsel to see “what measures can be taken against those that have made untrue and potentially defamatory allegations.”

U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) chair Gene Sykes said some officials and athletes from other countries are worried that anti-conspiracy law would allow the U.S. to arrest or subpoena Olympic visitors.

Some officials “have been very anxious about what it would mean to the sports figures who came to the United States, somehow they were subject to uncertainty in terms of their freedom of travel,” Sykes added. “And that is always concerning to people who don’t understand the United States.”

The case can be investigated in the U.S. under federal legislation named for the whistleblower of Russia’s doping scandal at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games – called the Rodchenkov Act.

Advertisement

“We will work with our members of Congress,” Cox told IOC president Thomas Bach ahead of the vote. “… We will use all the levers of power open to us to resolve these concerns.”

Olympic legend Dara Torres told Fox News Digital earlier this month she lost all confidence in WADA amid the latest scandal.

Winter Games celebration

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox speaks about Salt Lake City’s bid to host the 2034 Winter Olympics, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, in Paris. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

“I 100% agree. They’ve completely failed athletes,” Torres said. “I came from the era of the East German and then the Chinese, and there were random swimmers from different countries that were doping. First, overall, I don’t know how you have a conscious doing that because it should be equal ground.

“You shouldn’t feel great winning if you did it by cheating. And I feel like there needs to be more intricate testing to be ahead of the dopers and not behind the dopers. I know Travis Tygart, he’s the head of the USADA. He was actually very upset about that. He’s doing everything in his power to make sure that there’s going to be an even playing field and clean sport.”

Advertisement

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.



Read the full article from Here

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending