I told you about how James O’Keefe had tried to prank Minnesota elections. This state had a major fraud scandal where a few people had scammed childcare funds for millions of dollars, and the government has been hammering through those cases and slamming the con-artists into prison, while MAGA has been shrieking for justice because some of the perpetrators were Somali (never mind that the organizer was a white American-born woman). We are going to have to be strict in the prosecution of these white-collar criminals.
I guess we’re just going to have to drop the hammer on James O’Keefe.
The man in the video who falsely identified himself as William Pomeranz, whose real name is James O’Keefe, may have put himself in legal jeopardy.
“It’s illegal in the state of Minnesota to impersonate another voter, and this is apparently what O’Keefe did,” David Schultz, a constitutional law professor at Hamline University, said.
Schultz, Pomeranz and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon say the video shows the system worked.
“As I read the law, you can’t impersonate another registered voter, and that’s exactly what they appear to have filmed themselves doing,” Simon said.
Impersonating a Minnesota voter at a polling place is a felony punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.
I wouldn’t object to seeing O’Keefe locked away for 7 years. We have to do it to avoid being seen as soft on crime.
“Shot while trying to escape” would be a good first step.
Just do it.
What is the hold up here anyway? I would agonize for a whole 2 seconds about prosecuting O’Keefe for a crime.
He has ruined a huge number of lives with his lies and fake videos. His tactic is to shoot a lot of video minutes and then deceptively edit and splice them together to flat out lie.
IIRC, in one of his videos he tried to get state welfare workers? to do something illegal. They refused. He neglected to say that after he left, they called the police on him.
I wouldn’t prosecute him for a felony though. Seven years for being a creepy guy like O’Keefe seems like too much. It costs a lot of money to house a prisoner for 7 years. A misdemeanor would be easier to get a plea bargain or conviction.
Well, here it is from a quick Google Search. It wasn’t state welfare workers but ACORN.
The conservative media ignored facts and pounced on ACORN. Obama et al naturally threw ACORN under the bus instead of standing up for them.
“Personation” was notoriously common in Northern Ireland at one time with the slogan ” Vote early, vote often”
“Just a prank, bro! Get a sense of humor.”
Alverant @ 5
Fascists need to be counter-pranked with blunt objects, as they have no empathy nor respect for the law. To them, might is right. Let’s make them right.
Alverant @ 5
Fascists need to be counter-pranked with blunt objects, as they have no empathy nor respect for the law. To them, might is right. Let’s make them right.
Why the •☆▪︎ did I get the comment posted twice? The program is supposed to prevent this.
Ravan@2:”I wouldn’t prosecute him for a felony though. Seven years for being a creepy guy like O’Keefe seems like too much.”
By continually committing “misdemeanors” for his entire adult life with blatant fraud, and ruining a lot of other peoples lives in the process, wouldn’t it be prudent to protect society from these cruel sociopaths by locking them up for extended periods of time? Not doing that allows them and their small army of rabid enablers to continue chipping away at society. How do you think the US got a narcissistic idiot, lifetime career criminal, and obvious Russian asset into the WH? By continually letting him get away with his crimes.
https://factually.co/fact-checks/media/who-is-james-o-keefe-ea389a
*Even stealing money from his own Reich Wing organization, leading to his expulsion from his counterfactually names “Project Veritas”. “Project Veritas” uses similar tactics as another Reich Wing oxymoron; “Creation Science”.
Zetoplan, OK.
Good point. You’ve talked me into it.
That wasn’t hard.
The number of lives O’Keefe has wrecked is very large. I can’t give you a precise number but it is in the dozens or hundreds.
A felony would be justice.
Why is it that organizations named “Veritas” so often are about anything but? (Yes, there are exceptions, e.g. the line of tools produced by Lee Valley).
Here is one of the hundreds of lives wrecked by O’Keefe and Veritas.
The tl;dr version.
A tech worker at DHS met a young, cute woman online on a dating site.
She turned out to be working for O’Keefe, video recorded their “date” and recorded it and uploaded it to YouTube.
He is on YouTube calling his ultimate boss, Kristi Noem an idiot. She is an idiot and also evil.
DHS fired him and he is now suing DHS for violating his First Amendment free speech rights.
I don’t find this guy all that sympathetic because he doesn’t seem all that bright himself to get set up like this.
But still, he is a nobody in the government and now lost his job and is unemployed.
It is really malicious cruelty for no good reason but cheap entertainment.
They’ve done this to more than one low level Federal employee.
I redacted his name because he has been through enough undeserved misery.
I hope this fellow is prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. 7 years in jail for trying to subvert elections is not excessive; if anything it is not long enough. In my state, Nevada, back in 2020, people who claimed to be the legally elected Trump Electors submitted their documentation as such after loosing in court twice: District Court dismissed their suit with prejudice and the NV Supreme Court rejected their appeal. They suffered no consequences as a result of their fraud. One of them is currently running for Secretary of State. He ran in 2022, was soundly defeated. I can only hope voters will reject him again in November.
@birgerjohansson #8
Because it needed to be repeated.
It is hard to imagine what would warrant a maximum sentence if not this
He won’t face jail. Don’t worry, PZ, we are not soft on crime. This country revels in it, promotes and rewards it. There is no rule of law in this country. This entire magat cult and its plutocratic, corporate, billionaire sponsors ignore all the laws with impunity. They ignore court rulings against them. This country has more criminals running it than any other country on the face of this dying earth. We live in a growing morass of lying, corruption, cheating, fraud, flagrant hatred and murder of the innocent. There is no way any of this can be justified or rationalized.
Oh, and butthead blanche is saying there will be iceholes at the poling places. Welcome to the fascist police surveillance state!
Martha and the Vandellas just won’t stop singing.