MikeFarb Profile picture
Jul 12, 2018 23 tweets 7 min read Read on X
#unhackthevote

Supreme Court Justices

Religious Fundamentalists

And

Bots

Oh My!

What you weren’t taught in school about how your Gov’t works.

Thread
Who appoints our Supreme Court? The President?

Or a Catholic fundamentalist who controls a network of right-wing groups funded by dark money?
A few days ago our colleague @AltDIA made an interesting discovery. An apparent botnet of Twitter accounts tweeting identical messages: "As a Hoosier, I'm calling on @SenDonnelly to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court."
You can see this botnet in action here: twitter.com/search?f=tweet…
We thought this was unusual, and somewhat disturbing. A Twitter botnet lobbying for a Supreme Court nominee? Is this really what our Democracy has com to? We had a closer look at the image in these tweets. JCN? Judicial Crisis Network? Who are these people?
A quick search of Twitter led to this interesting bit of research by @RobertMaguire_ . Apparently someone had already set up several websites in support of conservative judicial contenders.
On July 9th these sites were all in "maintenance" mode:
confirmkethledge.com for Raymond Kethledge
confirmbarrett.com for Amy Coney Barrett
confirmhardiman.com for Thomas Hardiman
confimkavanaugh.com for Brett Kavanaugh
As soon as Kavanaugh's nomination was announced, his site went "live". And sure enough there is a link to Judicial Crisis Network at the bottom of the page.
Justice Kennedy announced his resignation on June 27. Did Judicial Crisis Network set up these domains and websites that quickly? How far in advance was this planned? We were curious, so we checked the dates of the domain registrations and hosting.
Turns out this was planned LONG ago.
The Confirm Kavanaugh domain was purchased in February 2017. The Confirm Kethledge and Confirm Hardiman domains were purchased even earlier - in December 2016! Hosting was set up for those three domains in May of 2017. Confirm Barrett was purchased and hosted in November of 2017.
Guess it always pays to be prepared. You never know when a Supreme Court vacancy might be up for grabs.

Can seats on the Supreme Court be purchased? Can United States Senators be influenced by bot infested social media propaganda? Is this how Democracy is supposed to work?
Who are the people behind Judicial Crisis Network? Whose money are the spending in their effort to swing our Supreme Court to the far right?
Judicial Crisis Network spent $7 million to block the confirmation of Merrick Garland and $10 million on ads to secure Neil Gorsuch's confirmation.
Where did they get this kind of money? Mainly from a single anonymous donor. Someone donated nearly $18 million dollars to this organization. Who was it? No one knows. maplight.org/story/dark-mon…
Did a single ANONYMOUS donor buy a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
And who is calling the shots there? Who is buying those domains? Who is creating that short list of judicial nominees for our puppet president to "nominate"?
That man is Leonard Leo. Read this beautifully researched Daily Beast article about him.  Read it and weep. thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of…
A Catholic fundamentalist who controls a network of right-wing groups funded by dark money. Leonard Leo is on leave from the Federalist Society to personally assist Trump in picking a replacement for Justice Kennedy.
His beliefs? Human life begins at conception. Homosexuality is immoral. Food is for nourishment. Sex is for procreation. This man is working to send us back to the days of public stonings for immoral behavior. Back to the days of shame and intolerance.
Is this the man we want to shape our future as a nation?
And I suppose if we ant a glimpse on the next four Supreme Court Nominees e only need to look here.
confirmkethledge.com for Raymond Kethledge
confirmbarrett.com for Amy Coney Barrett
confirmhardiman.com for Thomas Hardiman
confimkavanaugh.com for Brett Kavanaugh
We are now in a country where a select few are making the decisions that affect all of us. There are no more rules. Not for them.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with MikeFarb

MikeFarb Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @mikefarb1

Aug 21, 2018
#unhackthevote

So Russia has reportedly moved on from Hacking our Election Infrastructure. Moving on to other things. Don’t believe it. They are everywhere in our Election System. They know the importance of the Midterms.

And Now This!
cnn.com/2018/08/21/pol…

Thread
Parts of an operation linked to Russian military intelligence targeting the US Senate and conservative think tanks were thwarted last week. The domains were associated with the Russian government and known as Strontium, or alternatively Fancy Bear or APT28
"Hackers could have used the domains to send emails to Senate staffers or people working for the Hudson Institute or the International Republican Institute in an attempt to trick them into handing over information, like their passwords."
Read 5 tweets
Aug 19, 2018
#unhackthevote
Georgia to close 75% of Black Counties Precincts!! Precincts that were all open during the Primaries. They know they have a problem. Even with the Election machines that give suspect results they know they need more help.

Thread

crooksandliars.com/2018/08/georgi…
If this stands we need to start a major effort to provide transportation in this county. We will need drivers, volunteers and people to help distribute notices and spread the word.
This is also what we should be doing in any heavily Gerrymandered area where there is a difficulty with people traveling the long distance to their polling places.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 18, 2018
#unhackthevote

BOOM!
More than 250 Trump Organization Subdomains are in Communication with Computers in Russia!!

Thread
The Trump Organization, like most large organizations, has a lot of domains registered to it. Let's take a look.
Many of these domains have subdomains - like reservations.trumphotels.com. This is a normal practice. But we found something HIGHLY unusual.
Read 19 tweets
Jul 17, 2018
#unhackthevote
Remote Access Software used by ES&S Voting. They finally tell the truth. At least some of it. Thank you to @KimZetter for pursuing her initial story from February. I am afraid we are missing the bigger point here.

Thread
States have given over their Election Systems to a myriad of Private Companies. The States in many cases have absolutely no idea what is happening with their Elections.
Ask yourself why did the States notified over a year after the 2016 Election not know that they were being targeted by Russia? How is that possible? What does that mean for the possibility of having a free and fair Election?
Read 13 tweets
Jul 15, 2018
#unhackthevote

Michigan, ES&S and the Voting Machines that couldn’t count!!

Why are States Buying and Using Machines that don’t pass testing?

It is infuriating!!

Thread
All along there have been problems with electronic voting. Again and again election officials and observers have spoken up, only to be ignored.
In 2008 an election official in Oakland County Michigan noticed something alarming.with ES&S optical scan machines. Here is the story.
Read 20 tweets
Jul 14, 2018
#unhackthevote
Maryland Voter Registration System runs on Russian Owned Software! The biggest problem here is that they never knew it. How is that possible? The States have no idea who is behind the companies they give the Elections over to.

Thread

wbaltv.com/article/maryla…
We are going to be dropping a ton of research on exactly this. Why do States willfully do this. Would a state actually know if something went bad ? Let's talk more about Spearphishing.
Every company that touches a States Voting system introduces a hundred more employees that can get hacked. Companies rely on these contracts. They aren't going to disclose what happened. Just look at VR Systems.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(