Firearms owners know that in order to legally purchase a firearm you have to complete an ATF Form 4473 and submit to and pass a criminal history background check prior to taking possession of a firearm. Note that criminals do not have to do this.

That is why they are criminals.

Doing so, enters your personal information into an FBI database called NICS (National Instant Criminal background check System). That information is required by current law to be deleted within 24 hours, though the dealer is required to keep your 4473 for 20 years.

The controversy around whether or not the NICS database could or is being used to create a de-facto registry of who owns firearms is long established. Most firearms owners take comfort in the assumption that the FBI and NICS are following the law and believe that their information is being deleted as required.

That said, recently passed legislation has changed some aspects of the information provided to NICS when a background check is performed. With the passage of the NICS Denial Notification Act (NDNA) of 2022, the confidence that the FBI and NICS are following the laws is called into question. Two bills that have been made law at the Federal level are the cause for raising this question. They are S.675 and H.R.1796. Links to both are provided here for your convenience.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/675/related-bills
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1769/text

When the FBI NICS conducts a background check on people wanting to purchase a firearm there are three possible responses that can be provided – Proceed, Delay, or Deny. A Proceed means that a dealer can transfer the firearm to the applicant. A Delay means that NICS requires additional time to research the applicant. A Deny means that an applicant is a person prohibited from possessing a firearm or ammunition.

The new law is titled the NICS DENIAL (caps provided for emphasis) Notification Act (NDNA). The bill as passed, is silent on a Delay, outcome but is clear on a Deny outcome in requiring that the applicant’s address information (line 10 of the ATF Form 4473) be provided to the FBI NICS agent. That information is not normally provided in the course of conducting a background check.

When the line 10 information is requested, it is prior to the dealer being notified if the background check result is a Delay or a Deny. The line 10 information, by the new law, should only be requested for a denial and not for a delay. When a person is in a Delay status, their information, once moved to a Proceed, should be subject to the 24-hour deletion requirement. But is it, given the changes in reporting requirements? And what happens to the line 10 information that, by law, should not have been provided?

If a delay converts to a deny, then it becomes consistent with the law for the line 10 information to be provided. This is to allow the FBI to provide that information to local law enforcement authorities for possible action. In my opinion, this is a good thing.

I frequently make calls to NICS to perform background checks. Occasionally I will receive a request for the line 10 information. This is BEFORE receiving an NTN (NICS Transaction Number) is provided, which is the last step in the background check and when the status of the check is revealed to you. Most often, when the line 10 information is requested, the applicant is being placed on a Delay, not a Deny. This is inconsistent with the NDNA in that the law as written is silent on a Delay response and only addresses a Deny as the name of the law suggests.

After asking the question to a NICS agent and subsequently being transferred to two different people, I was never able to speak with anyone who could provide an answer to my question. I ended up leaving a voicemail for someone I was referred to but never received a return call. I sent an email to the FBI and got a reply from a Firearms Enforcement Specialist suggesting that I contact our FBI Field Office, which I did.

I talked with an agent at our local FBI branch in Boston who agrees that what is being done is inconsistent with the NDNA but did not have a remedy. The Specialist also suggested that I contact my Congresswoman, which I have done (Ann Kuster). I called the FBI Headquarters in DC and, after being on hold for 30 minutes, was transferred to another person who said we are just doing what “they” told us. When I asked who “they” are, he had no answer. This is a clear case where the FBI is acting in violation of current Federal law. And no one that I have been able to contact can explain why or suggest a remedy.

I get that they need to maintain a database of prohibited persons. But what are they doing with the information for the Delay responses, which 99% of the time comes back as a Proceed?

This is yet another troubling fact about the weaponization of the Judicial System in America. A Bill becomes law and then is poorly implemented. Or has it been implemented with a larger agenda in mind?

 

The post Is the FBI Now Keeping a Database of Firearms Purchases? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Apparently the government thinks having large amounts of cash makes you a criminal! If so come and arrest me! Note: Lawyers will say that having or moving large amounts of cash isn’t a crime despite what the government wants you to believe and it’s not evidence of ill gotten gain either. In this case it’s business cash of my company in my possession as I write this.

Crypto6 Day 4

[the accounting of Day 4’s trial has now been updated and completed, if you already started reading day 4 you can start off where it is noted below]

When passing through security and United States Marshals asked a question or two I said “I don’t speak to liars and thieves”, to which a Marshal humorously responded “You just did”, in those EXACT words. If I had been quick thinking I would have liked to have responded with “I rest my case”.

Today there were about ~16 freedom loving crypto6 supporters in attendance in spite of little advance notice about the fact the trial was now to be held on Fridays too. Previously we had been told or it had been implied based on the estimate end date and calendar days that the trial would not be conducted on Fridays. Apparently the court can’t do basic math.

Here is my Day 4 summary:

New witness

Name: Hope Cherry

Silverspring MD

Worked for agriculture federal credit union

Worked as the VP of security

Federal credit [something or other, possibly regulated by or some similar word] USDA

The credit union has 3 branches

Q What is a credit union?

A non-profit member owned financial institution

Q Smaller?

A Mine is

Q What is shared branching?

A As one does not have a lot of locations shared branch banking enables members to make deposits at associated credit unions

Q How do you use shared branch banking?

A Most use it for deposit and withdraws

Q What do you do?

A I’m a compliance officer

Q Bank secrecy officer?

A Make sure in compliance with law

Q Are you required to register with FinCEN?

A Yes

Q Do you have to have anti money laundering program?

A Yes

Q Do you have to have an anti money laundering program?

A Yes

Q Does it have a reporting requirement?

A Yes, anything in excess of $10,000

[what is interesting about this is that they’re not claiming he was required to register as a bank and money transmitters are regulated differently than banks of which they are saying is he required to register as, though the defense is claiming or will be claiming he was legally advised by state and a lawyer that the church was NOT required to register given the way the church operated its vending or crypto sales operations… it’s also important to note that if you are doing a check or credit card or something similar via a bank these things are not required of businesses selling stuff]

Q Anything else?

A Yes, also SAR

Q Like?

A If we suspect exploitation or elder abuse

Q What did you collect to comply with these laws?

A Name, Address, TAX ID, day to day transaction of the person

Q Do FinCEN give guidance on filing a suspicious activity report and what it is?

A Yes

Q How does someone open an account?

A Come in or online

ID, Name, address, tax ID, employment, use

Q Do you know Ian Freeman?

A Yes

Q How did he open an account?

A Online

Q Type of account opened?

A Personal

[something to note is that someone operating a business from a personal account is ok, one can also do business without registering a corporation, trade name, doing business as, etc, with some restriction possibly, but basically if you aren’t incorporated you’re generally a sole proprietor, but it may also be unclear what you should register as if you are another type of entity like a non-profit or a church]

Q Purpose listed?

A Household

[It is also the case that one might open an account for one purpose and end up using it for another, there is nothing indicating to the opener what a personal or business account are or which one to choose either or why in most instances but it also usually will come down to marketing of features even if, so one for example might open a business account if they do a lot of wire transfers because then they don’t have to go into the bank to conduct the wire transfer, but that will usually cost more, so you might prefer a personal account for a business if not much business is going to go through it, or only certain types of transactions will be passing through it]

Q Source of funds?

A $500k in transactions / month, location NH, it was unusual, and only application we’ve had from NH

Q Type of activity expected?

A Regular stuff, paychecks, bills, etc

[that is curiously maliciously answered response considering I know for a fact many small business are sole proprietors and will also use personal accounts for business, not just bills and paychecks, I both have had sole proprietor businesses and did work for MANY MANY other small businesses operated in the same LEGAL way]

Q Anything stuck out about this account opening?

A We checked into it and there were multiple inquires from other institutions

Q Example?

A Check tax ID correct, etc

Q If it was suspicious why did you open it anyways?

A This does not mean he is up to no good

[they are showing a bank statement on the screen]

Q What month was this?

A 2nd

Q What does ver. Mean?

A Verify account # is correct

statement shows deposits from all over the country

Q Anything suspicious? Did you file a report?

A Yes

[this is humorous because I also operated a computer repair business at one time with deposits coming in from all over the country… in and of itself this is NOT or should not be suspicious.. in my case contractors would deposit checks and cash into the business account once conducting repair work for customers and I’d then pay them per agreed terms for said work, and this is actually very common and there were far far far larger players in this field than me, in fact Dell did something similar for years, and other smaller players focus exclusively on contracting out repair work to third parties and then pay their contractors this way to such a degree they have custom developer websites and portals for it all]

Q Was there information from any other credit union(s) available?

A I asked others and got told they were seeing deposits and names of people making deposits

[Share branch deposit tick shown on screen with a $6,700 ticket]

Q What is this photo?

A I asked for a photo of the person making the deposit

[they bring up a page on screen from a currency transaction report]

Q What does this show?

A Someone other than the person owning the account made a deposit

[again none of that should be suspicious in and of itself, this is common with businesses for a variety of reasons, one is to avoid fees, wire fees have a $15-40 cost for instance whereas cash or check deposit is free and faster than mailing it and you avoid credit card fees, for years I paid a couple other small businesses that supplied my company with certain products or components used in products with a check from my bank, but I’d stop at their bank to make the deposit directly into their checking accounts as it was far far easier than mailing the check and cheaper than using a credit card and for that we would get a 1-3% additional discount on top of another discount we already got, my company sells computers and accessories for clarity on what we did/do aka ThinkPenguin.com ]

Q Did they get ID?

A Yes

[this is or was uncommon, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked for ID to deposit money into someone elses account and this is not or was not a standard procedure at most banks, though it’s possible in recent years it has become more common, but based on what I’ve heard at trial it sounds like this is still rare, but done at least at one financial institution]

Back to statement on screen

Q Stop after 12/6?

A Right, and serious concern about source of money so we restricted account

This activity cause us to talk to Mr Freeman

I called Mr Freeman and he said he was dealing in rare coins

Turned out to be virtual currency

Drilled down and found virtual currency

[she’s admitting that Mr Freeman was not dishonest about his use of the account and told them what it was being used for when asked for further details here which is the exact opposite of the governments claims that he lied to banks, they may not have understood that rare coins is an accurate description for what he was involved in, but as will or was demonstrated through anothers testimony who better although still poorly understood bitcoin that bitcoin has the word coin in it and what makes bitcoin valuable is its rarity, there are only 21 million coins that will ever be ‘minted’, and bitcoin when explaining it to people is commonly explained by comparison to gold and silver in that it’s valuable because of its rarity]

 

[it’s funny how I had a similar banking situation for years and years and no one ever restricted my account or asked questions about it, now there was one difference and that was that I believe I was using an actual bank rather than a credit union for business at the time, but there was a time where I used a credit union too, and it is possible that they would have seen this as suspicious as running a business from a credit union account while possible is less common, so to them it might have been seen as odd by comparison to other customers, the reason it’s hard to do business with a credit union as a business is usually due to wire transfers having to go through a bank and thus you end up with multiple intermediaries where mistakes can occur in the wire process… I actually closed a credit union account after a few years because it was just too much of a pain in the neck because of this, though not all small businesses do a lot of wire transfers, so I suspect at least some small businesses still do use a credit union over a bank like I did for my business for a while]

Q How did you feel about this?

A It was a red flag, but unsure about it

Q Type of business when asked?

A Shire Free Church

Q Did you search for it?

A Yes, I found the church with a search

Q Make any conclusion?

A It was a little different type of church

We felt we were dealing with and he was not registered

[ while I can’t speak with certainty it is my belief that it was probably the case that the Shire Free Church was not registered with any government at that time, and at some point something did get registered because of this incorrect assumption by financial institutions about the law, or at least they felt obligated to see that a church was registered even if not because of their own legal requirements, and it’s my understanding that churches can’t be required to register with the government because of other supreme court precedent, but that doesn’t mean you can’t register either, and many churches are registered in one way or another with government(s) in the united states at I believe the state level]

Q Did you close his account?

A We suggested he close it or we would

Defense cross examines the witness

Q You are employed as fraud officer?

A Yes

29 years

Q He applied in his name?

A Yes

Q Not a fake name?

A Yes, it was his real name

Q Address?

A Yes, it was a real address

Q He opened for minimum amount of money like most people do?

A Yes

Q $55,000?

A It went to buy bitcoin

Q Made deposit and purchased bitcoin?

A Yes

Q When opened account some red flags?

A No clear cut reason to say no

[this was a simple yes or no question she answered with a sentence… she was trying to avoid giving the defense evidence of innocents here because what this shows is that you don’t have to refuse business with people just because there are red flags and not even financial institutions who actually have to register need refuse service, so that begs the question why should a church who sells bitcoin and isn’t required to register as a money transmitter let alone a bank have to… remember she is also competing with bitcoin and as a competitor she doesn’t want this bitcoin thing to take off because it puts them out of business]

Q When asked for drivers license he provided it right?

A Yes

Q he didn’t stop doing business right?

A No

Q He was compliant right?

A Yes

Q No negative balance right?

A No

Q All positive searches?

A Yes

Q When did you find out cash coming in?

A We have a report, but didn’t immediate stop it

Q Shared branch did business with victim?

A Yes

Q Was there a problem?

A Concern, yes

Q Shared branch bank allowed it despite concerns right?

A Yes

Q She still has money in her account right?

A I can’t tell you

Q This one isn’t in her late 80s or even 70s right?

A Yes, that’s right, she is in her 50’s

Q She was a school teacher right?

A Yes

Q Because over $12,000 a report was filed right?

A Yes

Q They didn’t refuse it right?

A Right

Q Did teller have any problem with 2nd transaction shown?

A No, not that I’m aware of

Q He gave account info on how to contact him right?

A Correct

[ at this point the judge criticizes prosecutor for wanting to censor his own evidence]

[Exhibit on email communications between ian and bank compliance officer shown on screen]

[It’s admitted for what they call a limited purpose]

Judge says ~“can’t be considered true statements, only to understand his point of view, and to round up and understand conversation”

Overview of letter:

Letter explains Ian is a minister of church and law does not apply according to his lawyers. He explains why he thinks the compliance officer is wrong to close account.

There is no difference between vending person to person and selling online.

New Hampshire says “we don’t regulate that”

[this is a reference to what the banking department of New Hampshire stated prior to the state removing their authority to regulate cryptocurrency businesses, meaning the state already wasn’t regulating even if the banking department had the authority to do so before the bill removing their authority passed: https://freekeene.com/2016/09/29/full-video-of-nh-state-house-commission-to-study-cryptocurrency-first-meeting/ ]

The letter says the church conducts know your customer and gets IDs of buyers to stop fraud that is rampant in the online world.

We confirm buyer knows they are buying coins.

[He uses coins in regular conversation and not just “rare coin” when convenient. I believe later on there is evidence Ian even goes out of the way to call customers that he thinks may be getting scammed to ensure they know what they are doing. So much for the claim he didn’t stop transactions that were red flags. Notice though that the credit union lady already said they weren’t stopping transactions because of red flags because that isn’t what the law actually requires.]

Q Is that an accurate letter?

A Yes it is

Q Can you recall attached letter?

A Yes

[the attached letter is separate to the email discussed above]

It was NH banking commission

[while I’ve seen this letter I haven’t been able to locate it online anywhere unfortunately, not on FreeKeene.com nor in the docket, but the letter exists and was displayed in court]

Q You did send his remaining balance to him?

A Correct, there was no suspicion of wrongdoing

[aww wait wait wait what??? didn’t you just close his account for some sort of wrongdoing? Now you are agreeing with the defense that no wrongdoing on his part occurred? What this is suggesting is that the reason they closed the account was of liability on their part, not wrongdoing on the Shire Free Church’s part nor Ian Freeman]

Prosecutor cross examines

Q Did you speak to victim?

A Yes

Q How did you feel after talking to victim?

A I felt she could be victim of scam

[notice we don’t have any evidence that she is a victim of a scam and I’m not even sure they presented evidence she was a victim of a scam here, though this case is so unclear it’s hard to say one way or another, lots of “evidence”, but much of it is to make you feel bad, not that there is evidence of a crime, or at least not of Ian Freeman or the Shire Free Church, and remember the bank let this transaction through too, not just Ian Freeman]

Judy admits in writing to Ian Freeman/Church that the letter is “compelling” evidence of his argument.

Q Do you believe he was honest after using personal account for business?

A No

[this is such a load of crap, people use “personal” accounts for business all the time and she’d know that as the compliance officer, a sole proprietor is a non-registered entity effectively that is representing themselves unless they have a doing business as, but even in that case they are still a sole proprietor and would normally likely open a personal account for business because of the way taxes are conducted even if they have a separate personal account for their business activities separate from their bills/personal stuff]

Defense cross examines

Q Ian wasn’t taking deposits right?

A Correct

Q It would be up to each branch to stop transactions right?

A Not as clear cut as that

[she’s admitting that you only have to stop a transaction if you believe it suspect, and even then not necessarily which backs up the fact that simply doing some amount of due diligence even if you can’t confirm someone isn’t being scammed is sufficient under the law, thus Ian calling people who he thinks might be victims and getting additional verification from them about the transaction is exactly the same level of compliance that the banks do, but unlike the banks he has no legal obligation to do it on behalf of the church because he is neither a financial institution nor a money transmitter under the law, and while this COULD be different for another business if operated differently that wasn’t the case here, selling your own bitcoin from your own wallet does not make one a money transmitter, but an actual bitcoin exchange would make one a money transmitter under the law because you are acting as middlemen in the transaction and moving money or value from one location to another or one place to another, this is exactly what the law says, and the church didn’t do that]

Q They don’t try and stop it?

A [Silence]

Q Ian couldn’t stop it right?

A Correct

[wow, just wow, remember that this is the prosecutor’s own witness and has come in with an agenda of making Ian Freeman look bad]

Q They [the teller] took the deposit right?

A Correct

Q They [the teller] had control over that transaction right?

A Correct

Q Mr Freeman wasn’t there?

A Correct

Q He didn’t see any tell tail signs of a scam, right?

A Correct

Q If red flags existed Mr Freeman wouldn’t have known, right?

A Correct

Q The only person who could have stopped it was the branch employees, right?

A Correct

Q Is it policy to return funds to illegal transactions?

A What were we supposed to do?

[she doesn’t want to answer this one!!! I wonder why]

Q Did you ever sit down with FinCEN?

A No

Prosecutor asks some more questions

Q Do you know what Ian said that led to these people to deposit money?

A No

[how about what the fraudster said if this was a case someone was scammed because Ian wouldn’t have known what they told the victim and the bank wouldn’t have known either, this is a man in the middle scam, it’s neither the bank nor Ian/the Shire Free Church whom are to blame]

New witness

Name: Bruce Sweet

US Postal inspector

Federal agent related to crimes involving US mail

He works with drugs, money laundering, etc

Q Was Ian investigated?

A Yes

We investigated a package going to the church at shipping shack mail box

It was addressed to the shire free church

We open’d it and found a galaxy s phone box with cash inside it

It had $4,000 inside it

Box was from same victim as prior bank victim

Defense cross examines

Q Was complaint from victim?

A No

Q Do you know what cash was for?

A Yes, bitcoin

Q Wasn’t for drugs, right?

A Yes, it wasn’t for drugs

Q Legal product right?

A Yes

New witness

Name Paul Priosey

US Treasury IRS criminal investigation special agent

14 years

Investigated potential violations of the law like money laundering

Based out of charlot Virginia

Previously based out of NY

Q Was Ian investigated?

A Yes

Undercover doing transaction with Ian Freeman

Q What did Ian use? [forms of payment presumably]

A It depends

Q What was your role?

A Conduct bitcoin transactions with freeman

Q How long was your part in the investigation?

A One year

Q Much of it in writing?

A Yes

Q How did you connect with freeman?

A localbitcoin.com

Q Who told you where to start?

A Yea, others

[transactions shown on screen from 2019]

confirms he did these transactions with ian on localbitcoin.com

Q Why did you ask Ian to do a transaction off localbitcoin.com?

A It was easier

[curious – so they aren’t suggesting doing it off localbitcoin.com is to hide some sort of crime]

Q Transaction size?

A $502

“video” pulled up of conversation on telegram

[the prosecutor doesn’t understand what the word means, but none the less telegram is pulled up on the screen]

Q Can you ID defendant?

A Yes blue shirt

[in the room he identifies defendant]

Q Why did you tell freeman wire to bank account wasn’t working if that wasn’t true?

A To get another bank account

[agent openly admits he lied to mr freeman, a red flag you’re dealing with an undercover agent and I have to wonder if Ian wasn’t thinking this too at the time because it’s rare for stuff to not work like this for no apparent reason, but stupid could also explain it]

[chat logs on the screen show agent tried to get ian to do an in person sale after making a series of cash transactions into bank accounts]

Q Did he ask about source of funds?

A No

Q He told you what to tell the bank?

A Yes

[The undercover talks about church events like social sunday, night cap, crypto meetup, new vending machine at thirsty own, does $1000 transaction at vending machine, etc]

Q Asks no questions about why you have so much cash?

A No

[does $1500 constitute a lot of cash these days? If so I must be guilty of being a criminal… there is I believe $8k in cash in my hand right here or thereabout I believe and cash isn’t a crime, and do you know where I got this cash? the bank, and do you know the upstream source of this cash? a legitimate business where I sell computers and accessories called ThinkPenguin.com, and do you know what a lawyer would tell you? Possessing large amounts of cash isn’t a crime! :

 

 

 

 

[Day 4 continues from here… ]

Q Where did you meetup?

A Central square

Q Who there?

A Aria, Ia, Nobody

Q Was it recorded?

A Yes

Q Was it clear?

A No enough

Q We have short clip, does it accurately report what was said?

A Yes

[They play the audio clip in court. It’s entirely unclear  what was said other than “I don’t know. I’m gay” which is humorously something I said in response to someone else. Pretty sure that doesn’t make any of us criminals unless they criminalized me when I wasn’t looking. The agent said something about “infiltrating” our group which is humorous as it is an open to the public group on Telegram or was at the time Monadnock Cryptocurrency Network, and now on Matrix.. this clearly isn’t the brightest fed in the room and it was repeatedly stated by us over the years that the room had or likely had feds it… not that anyone was doing anything illegal, but people should be conscious of the fact that thugs were lying in wait to pounce on folks for doing legal things…]

A chat log containing conversation with Ian is put up on screen.

“only suckers pay tax on crypto

Also how was I obligated to pay taxes created in the first place?”

More Ian quotes from chat log shown:

“they sent a threatening letter to cvm operators a year ago

we all ignored it”

[the interesting part of this is that the church and Ian ignored it because legal council had already been advised that the church was operating in a way that didn’t require registration, which of course the government completely ignores that aspect of it all, and is actively fighting to keep evidence of this out, though they failed]

Ian chat log:

“I can’t sell you crypto because you told me too much”

[this is in response to the undercover fed who pretended to be a drug dealer, and there is NOTHING wrong with what is being said as the law says KNOWINGLY, so once you know you can’t, but prior to that you can, this is actually evidence Ian and the church were not committing a crime even though he may have wanted to]

More Ian chat log:

“I can’t KNOWINGLY assist you with your financial matters”

[again KNOWINGLY is literally in the law, yet this is what the feds are claiming was a ‘wink and a nod’ that it was “OK” to buy crypto from him despite NOT helping him with buying crypto or other financial matters]

Fed asks “Why not?”

Ian responds:

“You told me you sell drugs”

“Money laundering is knowing of illegal activity”

“I advocate for ending the war on drugs and responsible use of various substances”

[The undercover fed pretending to be a drug dealer came to a meetup and recorded audio and video at meetup.]

The prosecutor plays a VERY short video clip on screen.

Video shows nothing Ian and him saying machine is still at thirsty owl.

Q Agent say “You can still use it”

A Yes

[this was false… wait till the cross examination … it gets interesting ]

Q What did you do next?

A Went to thirsty owl and bought $20,000 from machine

They show a receipt of the money bought from the vending machine on screen

Q What was fee?

A 14%

Aug 25, 2020(?)

Defense gets up and cross examines undercover agent pretending to be a drug dealer

Q Purpose of undercover is to obtain evidence of criminal activity through deception, right?

A Yes

Q Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not right?

A Yes

Q No problems nothing illegal about the first dozen transactions, right?

A Yes

Q Telegram used because it is easier right?

A Yes

[interesting because I half expected them to try and claim it was used to cover up criminal activity, claiming something about encryption, when in fact Telegram is NOT end-to-end encrypted, but they didn’t go there in this case like they have in certain other cases in the past 5 years]

Q Why didn’t you disagree with him if investment wasn’t why you were buying bitcoin?

A Because I have a strategy to get conviction

[hmmmm so you don’t care about how you achieve the results, only that you achieve results]

Q Did you want to be willfully ignorant?

A No, just following directions

Q He didn’t say you couldn’t ask questions right?

A No

Q How do you know that his intent was to donate part of transaction to church?

A I didn’t

Q Meetup wasn’t illegal right?

A No

Q Nothing illegal about being a libertarian crypto guy right?

A No

Q You wanted to do this to further the trust aspect?

A Yes

Q Your goal was to get him to do something illegal?

A Yes

[How is this not entrapment???? definition of entrapment: the action of tricking someone into committing a crime in order to secure their prosecution.]

Q You want him to slip-up and fall?

A Yes, depending on how transactions go

Q you did not correct anything, right?

A Right

Q Did he ever say he wanted to lie?

A If asked to tell then it was donation or investment

Q But you did not ask Ian why that was, right?

A No

Q Ian dropped from 14% fee to a 10% fee for you right?

A Yes

Q He wanted your legal business, right?

A Yes

Q If they didn’t like you no break right? [if he didn’t like you he wouldn’t have given you a break, right]

A Yes

Q If they didn’t like you no break right?

A It depends but usually yea

Q Before [he knew of your criminal dealings he gave you a] 10% rate, but not once he knew you were involved in drug activity, right?

A Yes

Q Once he knew he didn’t want to do business with you right?

A Yes

Q Even after you didn’t stop trying to get him to commit crime right?

A Yes

[there is an aspect of entrapment in the law that basically says the government can’t try and get you commit a crime you wouldn’t already have committed on your own, which is probably why the lawyers asking these questions, they can hang out with you, but they can’t ask to buy drugs from you, if you are a drug dealer, but if after befriending them they try and buy drugs from you- then it’s not entrapment- it’s something along these lines anyway- but trying to win a fight with the government over entrapment is hard as everything favors them]

Q Despite insistence you still tried, right?

A Right

Q “I can’t tell you you can do that”, he said that right?

A Yes

Q You asked him specifically about using machine, right?

A He said I can’t tell you you can use it

[the fed admits that he lied previously on the stand under oath and that Ian didn’t say he could use the vending machine]

Q He said he can’t deal with you any more?

A Yea, but he said knowingly

[aww yea, cause buddy, he knew you were a fed, and he was quoting a key aspect of FEDERAL LAW]

Q You did ask and did get answer right?

A Yes

Q You put money in machine and out came receipts right?

A Yes

Q When he wanted you it was a 10% rate and after what was it?

A 14%

[ie the vending machine was 14% and Ian was giving the guy a 10% rate up until he couldn’t legally do business with him any more]

Q You did it on your own right?

A Yes

Q And this is a guy who gave you a break when he thought you were legal, right?

A Yes

Q You speculated, right?

A Yes, but he knew based on prior conversations!

[referencing that wink and a nod comment he made previously]

Prosecutor asks questions:

Q You broke his rule by telling him what you do right?

A Yes

Q What did he understand your intent to be?

A Ian said “If you mail UPS or Fedex because private mail service they can open package, but if USPS they supposedly need warrant so probably best with track + signature required”

[yea, this doesn’t mean he thinks you’re doing anything criminal, it’s also protection potentially from companies one might not trust, and I’m pretty sure there was evidence presented to this end, but he was saying some people trust USPS over UPS/Fedex because supposedly USPS needs a warrant whereas the others don’t, not that he even thinks this necessarily, he wasn’t the one with this concern, you were]

Q Is it your experience when people talk about search warrants they talking about criminal activity?

A Yes

[everyone thought this guy was a fed, hard to believe anything from this liars mouth]

[actual friends were given way better in person rates too at certain points as low as I believe 5% at one point, which was also the normal in person rate people were charging, so the market rate at the time, I can’t speak to later on, which probably would have been higher, but I suspect it wouldn’t have been 10%, but still would have been lower]

Defense cross examines witness again:

Q You did break the golden rule, you said you do something illegal?

A Yes

Q If you tell the bank you are a drug dealer they won’t do business with you either right?

A Yes

Q UPS is different right?

A Yes

Q USPS is safer right? Protect by government, right?

A Yes

Q But fedex you don’t know who is touching your stuff right?

A Right

Q They might have a criminal record right?

A Yes

Q One reason to suggest USPS is because it is safer, ever think about that?

A No

Q Postal is more regulated right?

A Everyone has there preferences

[humorously he didn’t answer the question]

Q It isn’t illegal to mail cash right?

A Right, send whatever you want

Q Did you ever ask why USPS over fedex specifically?

A He answered in voice

Q He said search warrant right?

A Yes

Q Makes it more secure right?

A Yes

Q You said it was legal to mail cash right?

A Yes

Q To get a search warrant illegal activity must be suspected, right?

A Yes

Q It starts warning people of scams right?

A Yes

[they are referencing the signs a the crypto vending machines]

Q Did he tell anyone to scam, or he activity sit there and let people get scammed?

A “I don’t recall”

[wow-really? are you kidding me? Does anybody believe this liar? why would you invest in a machine if a person was going to do the job??? this makes no sense and I have a hard time believing a jury if they’re following this would believe it either]

Q He specifically told you he didn’t want to do business with you right?

A Yes

Q “I can’t tell you you can use it” right?

A Yes

New witness

Name: Renee Spinella

25 years old

Married to Andrew Spinella

Live in Manchester

Completed high school 2014

Employment history: waitress

Q Know freeman?

A Yes, a decade

Q How did you first meet him?

A I don’t recall

We started dating in 2014

Q 2014-2017 living at his house?

A Yes

Q Professional relationship after breakup?

A Yes

Q What is this agreement?

A Agreed to generally help me move on

[the agreement they are referring to was effectively a breakup agreement that provided Renee with a bit of cash to move on with her life and was clearly not something Ian had to do because of some sort of court order, but simply because he was a good guy and wished the best for her, and I think those around Ian also were aware of his best intents for her even if not this agreement]

Q You had separate agreement for shire free church?

A Yes, selling bitcoin

Q Were you charged?

A Yes to one charge

Q Do you have immunity here?

A Yes

Q How long did you do the job?

A 2017-2021

Q Did you write contract?

A No

Q Do you know who wrote it?

A No, someone from the church

Q How did you communicate?

A Text, telegram, signal

Summary of screen chat log or similar content: Renee was told by Ian to tell banks she traded and banks would assume she was talking about trading stocks and commodities.

[what is interesting about this is that the day of the 2021 FBI raid the half dozen different 3 letter federal government agencies were all arguing about what to call bitcoin… some were saying it was a commodity, some were saying it was a currency, some were saying it was a security… if the government can’t come up with a straight answer here why is this a problem?? ]

Q Did you sell stocks and commodities?

A Bitcoin is a commodity isn’t it?

[to be fair I’m not sure even Renee knew, but probably thought yes here, but given government doesn’t know how is this even a fair question?]

Q Why did you say in chat he was rich?

A People making normal salaries are rich to me, as I’ve always been poor

ItBit log shows they want money service business registration stuff if operating an ATM

Government shows Ian saying “fuck” in the chat log to the demand for money service business registration documents

[something to note is that most people hate documentation of any kind or having to provide it whether or not they doing something criminal, being disgusted by this is not evidence of anything]

Q Did you open accounts for Mr freeman?

A For the church

Q Did it seem like a lot of money or a bit

A “A bit”

Q Would Ian review chats for you?

A Yes

Ian helps Renee with dealing with banks, itbit, and others, and making letterhead for crypto church

They play audio of FTL show talking about Nigerian scam

[totally missed the point of this audio clip, I guess we are suppose to assume he’s guilty because he is aware of some Nigerian’s scamming folks? I guess you shouldn’t do business with folks in an entire country just cause there are some bad apples… but of course if we took this literally then no one could do business anywhere because there are scammers everywhere]

End of day 4!

[Renee gets sick so she isn’t going to be coming back to testify until at least day 8 of the trial (ie which will probably be 12/19/22 assuming she tests negative for COVID and is feeling up to it), but her testimony is not over, and the defense has not had a chance to cross examine yet either, also two days were canceled of the trial already due to her and her attorney coming down ill]

 

 

Still catching up on a few things and hopefully, this post will catch up on all the details of this saga until the actual court hearing happens. Last time, it was set for November 29 and I arrived at Laconia District Court ready to video the proceedings (set for a 1/2 hour).

When I went to register with the Clerk of Court, I was told that the hearing was off and that it had been continued. As I said in that previous post…

Sidenote: you can see the previous posts on this by clicking here).

…he had lawyered up. Turns out that he hired Seth Hipple of Martin & Hipple to be his legal counsel. It also turned out that Hipple couldn’t attend and had filed earlier (back on 11/23/22) for a continuance as he could not attend. So, hiring a lawyer for a single hearing that can’t attend and has to push out the hearing date is a legal strategy?

Apparently, with no other information, it is. This:

Notice of Hearing on Stalking Petition 2022-11-08 Golter v Lambert for 2022-11-29 Laconia District Court

 

And this:

Defendant Motion to continue Stalking Petition 2022-11-23 Golter v Lambert via Lambert Lawyer Seth Hipple Doc 1 Laconia District Court

 

And now, it has been pushed out even further:

Lambert lawyer Seth Hipple request of Continuence Stalking Petition 2022-11-23 Golter v Lambert Granted for 2022-12-29 Laconia District Court

 

So, a stalling game – from 11/23 to 11/29 to 12/27? Look, I know that the Court system is still short-staffed and still trying to dig out from the COVID mess of a schedule that accumulated. I also realize that this is the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year’s season which makes scheduling just that much harder. So who is doing the stalling?  Is it Seth Hipple, the lawyer, or Lambert himself?  I can think of several reasons why the latter might, though.

UPDATE: as I was typing this up, another delay by Lambert:

Now, I’m no lawyer and have very little contact with the judicial system so I have no idea if this is par for the course in our neck of the woods or not But it does seem rather…different.

So the reason behind getting the Restraining/Stalking Order still exists – just not the order itself. So why (or by whom, I guess, is the better question) is this hearing being delayed again?

 

 

 

The post NH GOP Delegate / Gunstock Area Commissioner Douglas Lambert – Restraining Order / Stalking Order Sought – Paperwork Part 5 appeared first on Granite Grok.

Bizarro world was one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes. It was the story of Elaine meeting three new friends and entering a parallel existence where everything was the polar opposite of Jerry, George, and Kramer. She was torn between the dysfunctional friends she joined at the hip and the better civil versions. Many of us are experiencing the opposite of Elaine’s dilemma. We like and enjoy the civil, everyday life we have lived for decades and want nothing to do with the bizarro version of Joe Biden and the Progressives. We are fighting hard not to switch. Can we hold on?

Why do people like Biden, Harris, Cortez, and Sanders dislike America so much, and why do Americans send them to Washington repeatedly? I think there are two primary reasons. Probably many more, but two are significant. The first is that these people lie, especially Joe Biden. They campaign and give speeches convincing Americans that they are the same. They talk about their roots and how they feel our pain and have solutions. It is all a charade. They don’t have solutions. They have an agenda, but they want you to believe the former, and people are naïve enough to buy it, vote for them, and even send them money. People are scraping to put food on the table and keep the home warm, yet they are sending these millionaires cash to keep them in office. As I said, it is a bizarro world.

Look at today’s issues that explain the conundrum many of us feel. Millions of Americans who didn’t go to college and work hard to make ends meet are asked to pay the college loans of people who graduated with a useless degree and cannot afford the student loan payments. Until recently, you had to be Vaxxed and wear a mask to deplane and enter America. At the same time, thousands of unvetted and Unvaxxed people from around the world were wading across the Rio Grande to get a piece of the American Dream.

We have rising crime and homicide rates in many of our major cities, but Progressives want to defund or dismantle our Police forces. We are housing illegal aliens in $500 a night hotel rooms while we have active military on food stamps and veterans living on the streets.

We have a President who shut down our pipelines and declared war on the fossil fuel industry and petroleum executives while using our money to help mining and drilling in enemy countries like Venezuela and Iran. We are pushing people to buy electric vehicles while telling them not to charge them as brown-outs darken our cities. There are dozens of examples, but I think you get the message. The Biden administration and Progressive politicians conflict with themselves and think that is a better state of mind than the one we enjoy. It is a bizarro world.

There are so many unanswered questions. Why do these politicians want to destroy the America many of us love? Why do teachers teach our children to dislike America and disavow its history? Why do teachers want to discuss alternative sex lives and promote gender reassignment to children in elementary school? The Democrats blame Russia for interfering with every election they don’t win while they are working on getting illegal immigrants the right to vote. We have a President whose policies are destroying economies worldwide yet says he never pays attention to the Stock Markets. You cannot make these situations up. But they do exist. Nobody is coming forth with the why, but they are doing their best to keep us in the dark about the process.

Feelings of futility are overtaking our psyche, and we feel hopeless about stopping the new world order thrust upon us. We cannot let this happen, for that is part of their plan. If we give up, it will allow them to put into place all the ideas they have to transform our world into the one they envision. Our forefathers and all the patriots who followed never knelt to the pressures of the irrational people who wanted to tear down this great country, and we are not going to be the first to take a knee. Stay strong and God bless our efforts.

The post We Used to Laugh At Bizarro World, Now We Live It appeared first on Granite Grok.

Stew Peters is a feisty journalist who has emerged among the vast field of alternative media voices as a fearless opponent of today’s anti-American movement. Much of his focus turned to cover the COVID response as Peters, a natural skeptic of his government, could tell something wasn’t right from the outset.

Related: From The Stew Peters Network: ‘Died Suddenly’ – Watch It Now!

After two years of following the pandemic leadership response and exposing the lies, hypocrisy, double-speak, and abuses, he began to cover the sudden uptick in deaths occurring hours, days, and sometimes a few weeks among the recently vaccinated. The causal link wasn’t certain, but the evidence of adverse reactions to the vaccines was mounting quickly.

For example, insurance companies who considered the mother of all catastrophes a 10% increase in all-cause mortalities were now seeing an unimaginable 40% increase, not just in the United States but around the world. Instances of myocarditis and pericarditis in young men were occurring among the vaccinated at staggering levels. An internet search of the term “died suddenly” brought up so many thousands of hits it was hard to fathom. Even more so, those dying were often remarkably young and healthy, such as professional soccer players in Europe.

Embalmers began to discover a new type of clot never before seen in humans. Long, fibrous, and with the consistency of a rubber band or calamari, as one put it. Normal clots disintegrate under embalming – not these. Many reported the blood they were drawing out looked filled with sand or coffee grounds. They began to talk in their professional networks. Something was clearly not right, not since the virus began, but since the vaccines were released.

Died Suddenly chronicles these events, interviews medical experts who offer the grim reality they’ve witnessed, and paints a picture of what many in the film refer to as likely the greatest moral evil ever perpetrated among mankind. This movie is not for the faint of heart. Graphic images of blood clots and autopsies alongside actual footage of people going into cardiac arrest and stroke from all over the world (WARNING: some even falling under moving trains) run throughout the film to bring the point home. The unvaccinated are not dying suddenly, but the vaccinated are – why?

Click here to go to the Died Suddenly page.

Click here to read the Epoch Times article with cardiologists explaining the “died suddenly” connection to vaccines.

If you have been vaccinated and want to know how others who took the same batch have fared go to How Bad Is My Batch?

If you want ways to counteract the negative effects of the spike protein, which the medical experts say is the cause of these mutations and problems, here is an article by the Epoch Times touting resveratrol as a leading natural treatment option.

 

The post Died Suddenly: A COVID Documentary appeared first on Granite Grok.

So NH-NeverTrump Journal has a new “analysis” of the 2022 election that … SURPRISE, SURPRISE … comes to the same conclusion as his prior analyses, that the NHGOP performed miserably because the stupid voters picked “bad candidates” in the primaries. NH-NeverTrump Journal’s proof is that “Republican” Chris Sununu won, while the “bad candidates” lost:

Granite State Republicans still in denial about their “candidate quality” problem have used this factually incorrect conventional wisdom about young voters and Democratic turnout to push back against the argument that their candidates lost because they picked weak candidates. While the partisan breakdown of who showed up in the Granite State is not yet known, we do know that 352,000 of the 627,000 Granite Staters who voted were willing to cast a ballot for Gov. Chris Sununu. So why not vote for the other Republicans on the ticket, too?

Instead, Sununu outperformed the rest of the field by about 75,000 votes. Part of that was the power of incumbency and name ID — but not all of it. Some of those 75,000 Sununu voters knew plenty about Bolduc and Leavitt. And they voted against them. Using data from the Fox News exit polls, Aliza Astrow with the group Third Way projects that Bolduc not only lost 50 percent of independent voters to Sen. Maggie Hassan but also seven percent of his own Republican voters, too.

By comparison, Sununu lost just two percent of GOP voters in his race, and he picked up plenty of Democrats.

Sun-King Sununu picked up Democrat votes because he is more Democrat than Republican. He supports abortion up until birth (and for all we know post-birth); he praised the local Black Lives Matter chapter at a time when BLM and Antifa were burning and looting cities throughout America; he watered down a bill that would have banned Critical Race Theory; he believes it is “discrimination” to ban biological males from competing as girls in school sports. Etc., etc., etc..

So why did Sun-King (supposedly) only lose two percent of GOP voters, if he is more Democrat the Republican? Because the ever-shrinking portion of actual Republicans in New Hampshire support him because he SUPPOSEDLY is the lesser of two evils.

The post Because Sununu Isn’t A Republican … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Yes, I did get an answer concerning my RTK:

HB481 authorized a new Right To Know Ombudsman Office to be located in the NH Department of State once it has been staffed. As of last week, no such position has been filled. No news items have covered such an appointment or activation of that office. HB481 was enacted into State Statute on June 24, 2022, being duly passed by the General Court, with Governor Sununu’s signature.

This demand is for any and all communications (emails, voice mails) and other documents (e.g., position postings, resumes, evaluation documents, meeting notices, meeting notes, background checks, et al) pertaining to the hiring and appointment process concerning any and all respondents looking to be the first Ombudsman for the Office of the Right To Know

The email that came in, from His Excellency’s office (and yes, that is the official and Constitutionally mandated name of the Governor, was this:

—– Original Message ——

From: “Scully, James” <James.F.Scully@nh.gov>

To: “Skip@granitegrok.com” <Skip@granitegrok.com>

Sent: 12/12/2022 3:11:52 PM

Subject: RSA 91-A Right To Know demand – Status and materials concerning the Office of the Right to Know Ombudsman

Dear Mr. Murphy,

Kindly find our initial response to your request attached.

Best,
James

James F. Scully, Jr.
Legal Counsel
Office of Governor Christopher T. Sununu
State House
107 North Main Street – Rm 208
Concord, NH 03301
(603) 271-8791

And it’s payload was this. I did find a part of it “curious” so I have taken the opportunity to bold it:

STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

CHRISTOPHER T. SUNUNU
Governor

VIA Email

December 12, 2022

Skip Murphy
Founder, co-owner
GranitGrok.com

Dear Mr. Murphy:

I am writing this letter to provide an initial response to your December 7, 2022 request made pursuant to the New Hampshire Right to Know Law RSA 91-A for the following records:

• All communications (emails, voice mails) and other documents (e.g., position postings, resumes, evaluation documents, meeting notices, meeting notes, background checks, et al) pertaining to the hiring and appointment process concerning any and all respondents looking to be the first Ombudsman for the Office of the Right To Know.

As an initial matter, please be advised that it is the long-standing position of the New Hampshire Department of Justice that RSA 91-A does not apply to the Governor’s Office. Our office responds to such requests as inquiries pursuant to Part I, Article 8 of the New Hampshire Constitution to the extent applicable and subject to all privileges and defenses under New Hampshire law. While this office is therefore not subject to the 5-day timeline provided for in RSA 91-A, we endeavor to respond to all requests as soon as possible.

After reviewing your request, I estimate that we will need 30 days to complete our review and provide a further response to your request. If this timeline changes, I will let you know.

Sincerely,

James Scully
Legal Counsel

107 North Main Street, State House – Rm 208, Concord, New Hampshire 03301 Telephone (603) 271-2121 • FAX (603) 271-7640
Website: http://www.governor.nh.gov/ • Email: governorsununu@nh.gov TDD Access: Relay NH 1-800-735-2964

But glad to see that SOMEONE is respecting the NH Constitution (although it is clear that we at GraniteGrok spent a lot of pixels talking about the Office of the Governor NOT strictly adhering to the both the black letter law and spirit of the NH and US Constitutions.  Be that as it may, here is Part 1, Article 8 (because I CAN and because not enough people read to know what that “fence” is that protects We the People from Government – that fence is meant to keep them corralled inside of that fence while we freely go about

So, I responded:

—— Original Message ——
From: “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
To: “Scully, James” <James.F.Scully@nh.gov>
Sent: 12/13/2022 9:28:34 AM
Subject: Re: RSA 91-A Right To Know demand – Status and materials concerning the Office of the Right to Know Ombudsman

Good morning!

I am in receipt of your “initial response” and I’m glad to see that you will be honoring the details of my Right To Know concerning the Office of the Right-To-Know Ombudsman (Ombudsman to be?).  If it will take 30 days for a complete response to be assembled, I am happy to accept partial delivery of such Responsive Records that may be gathered sooner than your 30 day deadline.

Also, a question concerning:

…please be advised that it is the long-standing position of the New Hampshire Department of Justice that RSA 91-A does not apply to the Governor’s Office.

Would you please forward that memorandum/finding to me as well? I would like to read the legal foundation for it as I don’t see that the “Governor’s Office” is a listed Exemption in RSA 91-A:5.  As an engineer and as a former elected official who used RSA 91-A to keep other elected officials from going “off the rails” with respect to the rubric of “Follow The Law”, I am quite curious of the legerdemain employed in that position.

Oh, and if this new request rises to the level of another RTK, let me know and I can write one.  Should that be sent to, if needful?  Or might you have a contact in the NH DOJ that would be best to handle that?

Thanks!

-Skip

Skip Murphy
Founder, co-owner
GraniteGrok.com | Skip@GraniteGrok.com

It WOULD be rather interesting to see that reasoning.

And I still love the irony of having to file an RTK to see what is going on with the RTK Ombudsman position…

 

And for the record, here is RSA 91-A:5’s text (reformatted for easier reading):

91-A:5 Exemptions. –

The following governmental records are exempted from the provisions of this chapter:

I. Records of grand and petit juries.

I-a. The master jury list as defined in RSA 500-A:1, IV.

II. Records of parole and pardon boards.

III. Personal school records of pupils, including the name of the parent or legal guardian and any specific reasons disclosed to school officials for the objection to the assessment under RSA 193-C:6.

IV. Records pertaining to internal personnel practices; confidential, commercial, or financial information; test questions, scoring keys, and other examination data used to administer a licensing examination, examination for employment, or academic examinations; and personnel, medical, welfare, library user, videotape sale or rental, and other files whose disclosure would constitute invasion of privacy. Without otherwise compromising the confidentiality of the files, nothing in this paragraph shall prohibit a public body or agency from releasing information relative to health or safety from investigative files on a limited basis to persons whose health or safety may be affected.

V. Teacher certification records in the department of education, provided that the department shall make available teacher certification status information.

VI. Records pertaining to matters relating to the preparation for and the carrying out of all emergency functions, including training to carry out such functions, developed by local or state safety officials that are directly intended to thwart a deliberate act that is intended to result in widespread or severe damage to property or widespread injury or loss of life.

VII. Unique pupil identification information collected in accordance with RSA 193-E:5.

VIII. Any notes or other materials made for personal use that do not have an official purpose, including but not limited to, notes and materials made prior to, during, or after a governmental proceeding.

IX. Preliminary drafts, notes, and memoranda and other documents not in their final form and not disclosed, circulated, or available to a quorum or a majority of the members of a public body.

X. Video and audio recordings made by a law enforcement officer using a body-worn camera pursuant to RSA 105-D except where such recordings depict any of the following:

(a) Any restraint or use of force by a law enforcement officer; provided, however, that this exemption shall not include those portions of recordings which constitute an invasion of privacy of any person or which are otherwise exempt from disclosure.

(b) The discharge of a firearm, provided that this exemption shall not include those portions of recordings which constitute an invasion of privacy of any person or which are otherwise exempt from disclosure.

(c) An encounter that results in an arrest for a felony-level offense, provided, however, that this exemption shall not apply to recordings or portions thereof that constitute an invasion of privacy or which are otherwise exempt from disclosure.

XI. Records pertaining to information technology systems, including cyber security plans, vulnerability testing and assessments materials, detailed network diagrams, or other materials, the release of which would make public security details that would aid an attempted security breach or circumvention of law as to the items assessed.

XII. Records protected under the attorney-client privilege or the attorney work product doctrine.

XIII. Records of the youth development center claims administration and the YDC settlement fund pursuant to RSA 21-M:11-a, with the exception of settlement agreements, which shall remain subject to RSA 91-A:4, VI, and, after a claim has been finally resolved, such other records the release of which would not constitute a violation of other provisions of law or an unwarranted invasion of a claimant’s privacy.

Note that “Office of the Governor” doesn’t appear at all in those 13 exceptions.

Note that last bit, XII – am guessing that the NH State Government wants to keep secret any malfeasance concerning the Sununu Youth Development Center. Why, however, would it need special “recognition” where other statutes would otherwise be in force? Why is it so special?  But I digress.

Thirty days, eh?  Time to put it in my planner.

Speaking of which, I have a bunch of RTKs to go back and follow up on now that the elections and recounts are over. And post some of THOSE responses that haven’t been posted yet.

 

 

The post NH RSA 91-A Demand to the Governor’s Office Concerning the The Office of the Right To Know Ombudsman Office appeared first on Granite Grok.

Last night was the Newfound school board meeting, and a presentation was given showing parents, teachers, and school board members some of the subjective pornographic material being taught to K through 5th grade with a focus on 1st and 2nd-grade material.

Starting at 38:25 minutes.

 



 

Folks, this is a fight for our kids and the future generation of NH and the USA. Our kids are being subjectively brainwashed by tiny pieces of bad material that is being introduced and is being taught today to our kids. Without you getting off your couch and coming to these school board meetings, we will lose our kids forever.

Someone sent me this link below showing we are losing our parental rights and the schools want control of our kids. Besides this material, there is SEL starting to take hold as well, which is also linking up with CRT (Critical Race Theory). SEL (Social Emotional Learning) is another form of counseling for the kids, maybe with or without your consent.

When a student has an outbreak in class, they have special counselors/Aides/people who will try to reshape or train your child to not have an outbreak which makes sense, but this is the responsibility of the parent to fix, not the school. If the parent is unwilling to fix/correct bad behavior, then maybe the state needs to be involved, but the schools should not be taking on this burden and liability.

This is another reason why our schools cost so much. They add these people to counsel/correct the student’s behavior and then add more staff to help the teachers in one way or another and then add Admin staff for curriculum or data analysis or to create new grading instead of A B C D F or 80 90 100% which is now called Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Development, Insufficient (High School grading could be different). This leads to costing taxpayers more money and making the school system the parents of your children/grandchildren.

If we do not take this seriously, we lose.

If we do not get out to meetings we lose.

If we do not start talking to our neighbors, we lose.

If we do not run for office/school board, we lose.

And if we do not start educating everyone we run into, we lose. Fight, not just for your kids but everyone’s kids,

Ten of us cannot do it all.

 

Education as a Battleground

 

The post The Fight for Our Kids Continues appeared first on Granite Grok.

Sam’ Fabulous’ Brinton has been released from his job as the “Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy.” Brinton faces two felony counts of theft, and while that’s as it should be, there’s something more ghastly for which he is responsible.

First.

 

[A] felony arrest warrant was issued in Las Vegas for the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy on a second felony charge for stealing luggage from the Harry Reid Airport.

Brinton was first charged with a felony in November for stealing a woman’s Vera Bradley suitcase reportedly worth $2,325 from baggage claim at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport on Sept. 16, according to court documents. Brinton at first denied the charge, but later said he took the designer luggage by mistake.

 

Sam likes to steal ladies’ luggage. It’s like shopping without paying, plus you get great luggage. And while that’s amusing on some level, this is the real issue. Brinton’s story about being abused in therapy motivated many LGBT activists to push for “conversion therapy” bans, but some in the movement suggest he was probably lying.

 

Brinton testified in support of therapy bans, claiming that he suffered from “conversion therapy.” However, even LGBT activist Wayne Beson — who vehemently opposes “conversion therapy”—noted in LGBTQ Nation that Brinton’s story was “too good to be true” and faulted LGBT activist groups and the press for failing to verify it before championing his cause. …

According to the LGBT group The Movement Advancement Project, “conversion therapy” bans have become law in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Washington, D.C.

 

According to “Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr., a licensed psychotherapist,” “Brinton’s testimony about his alleged experience played a key role in banning legitimate practices across the nation.”

In New Hampshire, it is illegal for a therapist (coach, teacher, pastor, or just about anyone) to help someone who has gender dysphoria choose to be their biological gender. In other words, they were born male, and they decide they want to be and feel and live as a biological man and need some help, but no one can legally provide it.

Years later, diversity-hire Brinton appears to have other mental health issues, including support for an illegal prostitution site called Rentboy (no longer in service) and the desire to steal expensive luggage. And while he might suffer some consequence for that though I doubt it(do you put him in the men’s or women’s prison), how do we repair the damage done to the mental health profession?

Therapists have been gag-ordered even when their patients want the treatment they are prohibited from providing. And how do we undo that damage?

I think someone who is dysphoric and wants help to maintain their biological gender needs to seek therapy they can’t get. They and their therapist could challenge the law.

I’m not sure that will happen, but short of our legislature having the votes (they do not have them this session) or the stones (will they ever?), people with mental health issues will be denied treatment.

 

 

The post Luggage-Stealing Non-Binary Cross-Dressing Nuclear Energy Official Sam Brinton Has Been Fired appeared first on Granite Grok.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Dec. 11, 2022) – Under intense pressure from grassroots activists, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors reversed course and banned killer robots in the city. The San Francisco Police Department’s plan to arm robots came to light under a police militarization transparency law passed last year.

The SFPD owns 12 functioning robots used primarily for bomb disposal and reconnaissance in dangerous situations. The department acquired the robots between 2011 and 2017. According to an AP report, some of the robots were purchased with federal funds.

None of the robots came equipped with weapons, but the police department wanted the option to deploy robots equipped with explosive charges “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspects” in what they consider to be life-threatening situations.

Until last year, any such policy changes would have been made unilaterally by the SFPD. But, because of a law passed by the California legislature in late 2021, SFPD was required to not only give public notice, but get approval first.

Under AB481 sponsored by Asm. David Chiu (D) and a coalition of Democrats, law enforcement agencies must develop a detailed military equipment use policy and present it in an open meeting before obtaining military equipment. After the public meeting, the local governing body can either approve or deny the acquisition. Law enforcement agencies must also get local government approval to continue using existing military equipment and to change any existing use policy.

Because of the law, the San Francisco Police Department was forced to reveal its plans to arm robots, and get approval for the policy change from the board of supervisors. This brought it a lot of attention, both locally and nationally.

On Nov. 29, the board initially approved new language in the robot use policy by an 8-3 vote with a final vote scheduled for Dec. 6. The new policy stipulated that “robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.”

News that the city had authorized “killer robots” set off a firestorm of opposition. A large coalition quickly mobilized in hopes of stopping authorization on the final vote. Within just a few days, 40 organizations, including the Tenth Amendment Center, signed onto a coalition letter opposing the policy.

The backlash was so strong that the board quickly reversed the decision Tuesday, sending some of the proposed policy back to a committee for further review. The 8-3 vote in support of the “killer robots” was quickly flipped when the Board voted unanimously to explicitly ban the use of robots in such a fashion for now.

But the battle isn’t over. The board sent the issue back to the Rules Committee for further review and public comment. That means the full board could still approve a revised policy allowing robots to use lethal force in the future.

For the time being, however, despite SFPD’s wishes, they are currently banned from arming robots with a deadly force option.

The Board’s surprising u-turn underscores the power of sunlight coupled with dedicated grassroots activism.

The law enacted by AB481 is relatively narrow in scope and doesn’t do anything to stop the militarization of police. But it does make the process of acquiring military-grade equipment more transparent. Prior to the enactment of this law, law enforcement agencies in California often acquired military equipment without anybody even knowing, much less approving it.

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

The vote was the result of a new state law that requires police departments to inventory equipment including certain guns, grenades, armored vehicles and battering rams and to seek explicit approval for their use. So far, only San Francisco and Oakland have discussed lethal robots as part of that law. Oakland police wanted to arm robots with shotguns but backed down in the face of public opposition, instead opting for pepper spray.

Of course, transparency alone doesn’t stop government actions. Oftentimes, government bodies simply rubber-stamp police requests. But when grassroots activists get involved, they can drive change, as we just saw with the killer robot policy.

Transparency sets the stage. It provides a means for the community to know exactly what its government is doing. As the old saying goes, sunlight is the best antiseptic. But ultimately, substantive changes in policy requires human action.

Initially, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was set to rubber-stamp law enforcement’s request for killer robots – even with public disclosure. But when activists got wind of the proposal and took action, they were able to exert enough pressure on government officials to reverse the bad policy.

Without AB481, nobody would have known about the killer robots. But without the concerted effort of concerned individuals pressuring government officials, they would have gotten killer robots anyway.

 

 

Mike Maharrey | The Tenth Amendment Center

The post San Francisco Killer Robot Proposal Killed Thanks to New Transparency Law and Tenacious Activists appeared first on Granite Grok.

Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council was a cast of volunteer social justice busy-bodies whose progressive agenda served the political Left. Mr. Musk has decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best way to bring external insights into Twitter, and all 100 or so have been relieved of duty.

I’m sure they took the news about as well as can be expected.

Some of the work that needed doing but that the “Safety Council” had ignored (at least in Musk’s opinion) was child sexual exploitation (CSE). Since he’s the biggest cheese at Twitter, that will take precedence, which is good news.

According to Red State, three members of the Council” quit when Musk suggested there had not been enough focus on CSE. Note to law enforcement. You might want “do a wellness check” on those three. Make sure they are okay. And if possible, get a warrant to search their computers for kiddie porn.

Anyway.

 

The Council was comprised of about 100 people — volunteers including activists and “independent experts” from various human rights and other organizations from around the world — who weigh in on “safety, products, programs, and rules.”

 

Taking out the trash is always one of the first orders of business after a leadership change. Trump’s failure to make that job one as president cost him so much time and caused so much trouble. Musk doesn’t seem like the sort to make that mistake (and yes, different circumstances). And while Twitter is huge and a lot of the garbage is taking itself out, until the organization has undergone an ideological enema, it can’t be a steadfast defender of free speech, which is Musk’s stated goal.

Employees should leave their politics at home. Those that can will stay. Those that can’t will go. It could be a lot like everyone else’s workplace. You have a right to your opinions, but that’s not why we’re paying you. Do that crap on your own time.

 

The post Elon Musk Just Disbanded Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council appeared first on Granite Grok.

While Republicans and Democrats are having a tug of war in defining “marriage,” they have involved the government in a sacred religious ceremony, stepping into unconstitutional territory.

What an incredible difference the 2022 midterm election made for the Republican Party—the one political organization many conservatives rely upon, and hope the party will uphold traditional Christian family values and channel these values through policies and decision-making in Congress.

In recent years, many Americans have come to view the Grand Old Party (GOP) as responsible for “conserving” personal liberties, and the social and moral fabric of the Republic. We look to the GOP as the mature sibling of the Democratic Party, and to safeguard America as our Founding Fathers intended when they framed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

In mid-November, Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York was re-elected House Republican Conference Chair, and Tom Emmer of Minnesota was elected House Majority Whip.

Congratulations—

I would’ve finished the above sentence but stopped short after learning they voted in favor of legislation proposed by the Democratic Party to codify “same-sex marriage” in federal law.

Stefanik and Emmer were among 47 Republicans in the House of Representatives who joined Democrats in mid-July to pass the “Respect for Marriage Act” (RMA) which would repeal the largely unenforced “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA).

Enacted in 1996, DOMA defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman under federal law and allows individual states not to recognize a “same-sex marriage” performed and legally recognized in another state. DOMA also clarifies that a “spouse” is someone of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

In contrast, RMA would recognize under federal law a “marriage” between two individuals performed by a state, and require all other states to recognize that “marriage” regardless of the “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals.”

Furthermore, according to Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who also voted in favor of RMA, the bill does not authorize the federal government to recognize polygamous marriages.

For now, that is—because there is no bottom to pandora’s “marriage” box and an excellent opportunity for pressure groups and activists to fight for the “right” to a federally recognized “polygamous marriage.”

Some habits are hard to change. For example, Stefanik and Emmer voted in May 2016 among 43 Republicans for an amendment requiring any federal contractor to institute a policy refusing to “discriminate” individuals who identify under the umbrella of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender” (LGBT.)

At one point, Stefanik also backed the “Fairness for All Act” (FFAA) in February 2021, a bill that would prohibit “discrimination” based on “sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, while providing certain benefits and exemptions to religious providers.” However, she eventually withdrew her support after mounting pushback from conservatives who argued that the bill offered minuscule protections for religious liberty.

In effect, the FFAA was a “moderate” version of the “Equality Act” (EA) proposed by the Democratic Party, which aimed to amend the “Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation in places of public accommodation.”

The EA would restrict employers with 15 or more employees from “discriminating” them based on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” It would also demand that individuals be given access to a “shared facility,” including a restroom or locker room, based on their personal “gender identity.”

Which political party carves America’s path?

One can observe that many Republicans attempt to hinder the pace of America on par towards cultural erosion, often supported by a tide of conservative resistance—but a trajectory they have nonetheless seemingly resigned will come to pass. At the same time, their Democrat counterparts are all too willing to push forward America’s voyage towards moral decline at a much faster rate.

Pressure group lobbyists who advocate for “rights” under the LGBT umbrella channel their activism through the more sympathetic Democratic Party, thus setting the trend of “progress.” At the same time, Republicans find themselves fighting to “conserve” traditional marriage; this struggle, this resistance can seem futile because over 70 percent of Americans say “homosexuality should be accepted” and about 60 percent say “legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society.”

Even Donald Trump, as a Republican, became the first American president to enter office already supporting “same-sex marriage,” calling the act “settled” by the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS.)

The idea of marriage—that is, the psychological and emotional benefits and economic advantages of a monogamous union between a man and a woman—must regain momentum at the grassroots level. It must be “sold” to emerging youth as “progress” towards good mental health and financial stability. The desire for children will naturally follow to a lesser or greater extent. But such a, dare I say, radical idea must be viewed by the target population as “progress” in their pursuit of happiness and not “going backwards.”

Thus, the Republican Party could go on the offense insofar as supporting pro-marriage and pro-family initiatives at a local level. But, unless there is a radical change among Republican lawmakers in the next few years, it might take at least a decade to educate an uprising of Americans who enter the GOP with a commitment towards upholding the moral backbone of society—and the Constitution.

Is DOMA or RMA even constitutional? We note that twelve Republicans in the Senate helped to advance a final vote for RMA in late November. But since the bill’s text differs from that passed in mid-July, it must return to the House of Representatives for an additional vote.

Let us not forget that New York Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler introduced RMA with claims to repeal the federal statute DOMA “and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for other purposes.”

Interestingly, the SCOTUS had already ruled that DOMA was unconstitutional in 2013 (United States v. Windsor) and then again in 2015 (Obergefell v. Hodges.) Furthermore, regardless of the desire to codify “marriage” as a union between any two individuals in federal law, the “Full Faith and Credit Clause” of the Constitution addresses the duty that all states have to respect the “public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.” In other words, passing DOMA in the first place did not change what is already enshrined in one of America’s founding documents.

With the above said, even if a Supreme Court rules a state or federal statute as unconstitutional, that statute still exists—what changes are how courts, prosecutors and judges will proceed when evaluating whether to execute that particular statute. Thus, RMA merely cleans the DOMA federal statute that the SCOTUS already struck down on two separate occasions.

The biggest problem with RMA and DOMA is driving away the idea of marriage from a religious context and forcing the state to “recognize legal marriage.”

Is this idea entirely new? No.

If we dig back in time, we learn about anti-miscegenation laws criminalizing interracial marriages from the late 17th century through the late 1960s, until the SCOTUS ruled such laws unconstitutional via the 14th Amendment adopted in the late 19th century.

So here’s another radical thought.

How about We, the People, do not allow the government to define marriage?

Period.

 

 

Cameron Keegan writes at The Blue State Conservative 

The post Why Any Federal Law Defining “Marriage” Is Unconstitutional appeared first on Granite Grok.

Remember Gibson’s Bakery? An Oberlin College Dean led a Social Justice war on a local small business. They created a crime fabricated a narrative to substantiate it then tried to ruin the Bakery.

 

They protested and spread flyers labeling the white family that owns (Gibson’s) as racist for stopping shoplifting students of color. It affected their business, and they are suing the College and select staff who they claim abetted the defamation.

 

In early 2019 the courts found Oberlin guilty and complicit in the smear. The total price tag rang up at around 31 million dollars. Oberlin began to appeal, and appeal, and drag out the process. They wanted anything but to pay for what the #woke little college had done – lead by a dean on the social justice warpath. A dean no one tried to reign in until after they were sued.

Ultimately, David Gibson and his father (Granpa) would pass away before the bill was paid, but they lived to hear the verdict, and the Gibson family and their business finally got their money.

 

The last we checked in on Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College, the Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear Oberlin College’s appeal, ending the college’s fight to overturn the massive jury verdict. The $25 million verdict plus interest and attorney’s fees resulted in an almost $32 million judgment, with interest running at about $4000 per day since June 2019. In all, over $36 million was owed, secured by an appeal bond.

 

The interest charged is a nice touch, and I’m not familiar enough to know if that’s normal, but bravo. By delaying those snide, #woke, liberal-privilege bastages lost another five million.

Legal Insurrection has interviews if you are interested.

 

The post Oberlin College Finally Pays Gibson’s Bakery (With Interest) 3 Years After Losing Defamation Suit appeared first on Granite Grok.

It is not wrong for former members of our Intel community to support political candidates, including men or women, running for President. The problem, or issue, with the 51 former No-tel hacks listed below is that they conspired, lied, and still stuck by or hid from the letter of misinformation they all signed.

That letter claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop did not exist and that the idea was a product of Russian misinformation. This letter was used by politicians and the media to gaslight the public and to hide the reality that would have harmed Biden’s Presidential run. This letter was written on October 19, 2020, just weeks before the 2020 Presidential Election. Documents prove the FBI took possession of the Hunter Biden laptop in December 2019. The laptop that did not exist, according to these 51 individuals, had been in FBI headquarters for nearly a year. None of these lying former American spies will retract their claim.

I will not try and speculate who coordinated this letter and its impact on the election. The hearings will start in January, and let’s see who of the 51 are willing to lie under oath. These men need to be held accountable for their actions. It is the only way to restore some credibility in our government. That credibility was destroyed by the Lois Lerners and James Comeys of the swamp, who broke the rules, got caught, and retired with full benefits. We only need to be patient for a few weeks. January 3rd, the fun starts, and the onion gets peeled.

The Embarrassing Former Intel Hacks

John Brennan, former CIA director, now analyst for NBC and MSNBC: Didn’t respond.

Thomas Fingar, former National Intelligence Council chair, now teaches at Stanford University: Didn’t respond.

Rick Ledgett, former National Security Agency deputy director, now a director at M&T Bank: Didn’t respond.

John McLaughlin, former CIA acting director, now teaches at Johns Hopkins University: Didn’t respond.

Michael Morell, former CIA acting director, now at George Mason University: Didn’t respond.

Mike Vickers, former defense undersecretary for intelligence, now on board of BAE Systems: Didn’t respond.

Doug Wise, former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director, teaches at University of New Mexico: Didn’t respond.

Nick Rasmussen, former National Counterterrorism Center director, now executive director, Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism: Didn’t respond.

Russ Travers, former National Counterterrorism Center acting director: “The letter explicitly stated that we didn’t know if the emails were genuine, but that we were concerned about Russian disinformation efforts. I spent 25 years as a Soviet/Russian analyst. Given the context of what the Russians were doing at the time (and continue to do — Ukraine being just the latest example), I considered the cautionary warning to be prudent.”

Andy Liepman, former National Counterterrorism Center deputy director: “As far as I know I do [stand by the statement] but I’m kind of busy right now.”

John Moseman, former CIA chief of staff: Didn’t respond.

Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA chief of staff, now senior advisor to The Chertoff Group: Didn’t respond.

Jeremy Bash, former CIA chief of staff, now analyst for NBC and MSNBC: Didn’t respond.

Rodney Snyder, former CIA chief of staff: Didn’t respond.

Glenn Gerstell, former National Security Agency general counsel: Didn’t respond.

David Priess, former CIA analyst and manager: “Thank you for reaching out. I have no further comment at this time.”

Pam Purcilly, former CIA deputy director of analysis: Didn’t respond.

Marc Polymeropoulos, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

Chris Savos, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

John Tullius, former CIA senior intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

David A. Vanell, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

Kristin Wood, former CIA senior intelligence officer, now non-resident fellow, Harvard: Didn’t respond.

David Buckley, former CIA inspector general: Didn’t respond.

Nada Bakos, former CIA analyst and targeting officer, now senior fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute: Didn’t respond.

Patty Brandmaier, former CIA senior intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

James B. Bruce, former CIA senior intelligence office: Didn’t respond.

David Cariens, former CIA intelligence analyst: Didn’t respond.

Janice Cariens, former CIA operational support officer: Didn’t respond.

Paul Kolbe, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

Peter Corsell, former CIA analyst: Didn’t respond. 

Brett Davis, former CIA senior intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

Roger Zane George, former national intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

Steven L. Hall, former CIA senior intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

Kent Harrington, former national intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

Don Hepburn, former national security executive, now President of Boanerges Solutions LLC: “My position has not changed any. I believe the Russians made a huge effort to alter the course of the election . . . The Russians are masters of blending truth and fiction and making something feel incredibly real when it’s not. Nothing I have seen really changes my opinion. I can’t tell you what part is real and what part is fake, but the thesis still stands for me, that it was a media influence hit job.”

Timothy D. Kilbourn, former dean of CIA’s Kent School of Intelligence Analysis: Didn’t respond.

Ron Marks, former CIA officer: Didn’t respond.

Jonna Hiestand Mendez, former CIA technical operations officer, now on board of the International Spy Museum: “I don’t have any comment. I would need a little more information.”

Emile Nakhleh, former director of CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, now at University of New Mexico: “I have not seen any information since then that would alter the decision behind signing the letter. That’s all I can go into. The whole issue was highly politicized and I don’t want to deal with that. I still stand by that letter.”

Gerald A. O’Shea, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

Nick Shapiro, former CIA deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to the director: Didn’t respond.

John Sipher, former CIA senior operations officer: Declined to comment.

Stephen Slick, former National Security Council senior director for intelligence programs:

Didn’t respond. 

Cynthia Strand, former CIA deputy assistant director for global issues: Didn’t respond.

Greg Tarbell, former CIA deputy executive director: Didn’t respond.

David Terry, former National Intelligence Collection Board chairman: Couldn’t be reached.

Greg Treverton, former National Intelligence Council chair, now senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “I’ll pass. I haven’t followed the case recently.”

Winston Wiley, former CIA director of analysis: Couldn’t be reached.

The post The 51 “No”tel Hacks Need to Spill It appeared first on Granite Grok.

Melanie Neighbours On Witness Stand

Today was a very sad day. I heard from what I considered a good friend turn on another good friend during day 5’s Crypto6 trial. While I knew Melanie Neighbours had some misgivings I had never imagined that she would actively work against Ian Freeman let alone lie- or at least mislead a jury on the witness stand.

Shortly after the March 2021 raid we communicated a number of times and I said to her there were two things I thought she should do in regard to her situation. One was not lie even if it was to Ian’s detriment. Ian Freeman could take care of himself I said, and two, don’t do anything to incriminate yourself or even remotely appear to be partaking in any activity that might be perceived as not-kosher.

Alas- she seems to have at least broken one of these pieces of advice. Why? Over a stupid squabble? Some insignificant issue she perceived to exist? Well, unfortunately yes. There was a question as to whether or not a mistake was made in certifying Ian’s assets vs the Shire Free Churches assets and what was little more than a minor oversight she turned into a flaming drama fest on the stand.  As a bookkeeper she certified Ian as having ~3 million dollars in assets of one kind or another.

Not everyone whose taken the stand to testify for the prosecution has done everything perfectly. Being questioned by a prosecutor or lawyer can be quite nerve wracking after all! One witness who should have been favorable to the defense (though forced to testify against Ian Freeman) let (however unintentionally) the prosecutor lead her to a mistaken answer. That was correctly fixed by the defense re-asking the question differently. No hard feelings. It happens. The damage could be huge, but the defense fixed it. We’re all human.

This? This is going to take a lot more time to heal. That said Ian Freeman’s got one of the biggest hearts and I bet he’d even forgive you despite this attack. Maybe there is more to the story I’m not seeing still. Maybe this was the plan all along. I’m going to hope it really was just a squabble over some irrelevant detail, because the alternative is you are the biggest piece of shit Melanie.  If you were working for the feds all along you are lower than low and I will NEVER forgive you. Feds don’t deserve forgiveness. Anyone else… even the most depraved human beings I can forgive, but NOT people who create a living out of others misery.

I’ll end on a positive note. The Crypto6 protest went great! ~16 people came out to the trial today and ~50 turned up to our little protest outside the federal courthouse in Concord. The video(s) I recorded are below.

 

https://www.freedomdecrypted.com/public_html/other-content/dec-12-2022-protest-crypto6-federal-courthouse-concord/part1-dec-12-22-protest-concord-federal-court-crypto6.mp4

 

http://freedomdecrypted.com/public_html/other-content/dec-12-2022-protest-crypto6-federal-courthouse-concord/part2-dec-12-22-protest-concord-federal-court-crypto6.mp4

You can never tell with long-range forecasts, but the 14-day forecast for most of the US shows a mass of cold air and snow in places that don’t typically see it around December 25th. Yes, it looks like a white Christmas is headed our way, bringing cold air with it.

 

Coldest Christmas with most widespread snow over since 2000 IMO.
GEFS Christmas temp anomalies vs 2000, and enemble snow before that. Impressive for an ensemble that far out. Coldest DN -24 pic.twitter.com/TLJeieFAZ6

— Joe Bastardi (@BigJoeBastardi) December 12, 2022

 

Joe Bastardi has been pretty good at this (it’s his business), so while not gospel, it’s better than your average local news forecast, except for the finer details with which the locals have a spotty record.

And we’ve got this.

 

Maybe the coldest holiday period for the US in many years pic.twitter.com/B0n7t1VXcO

— Chigeorge (@Chigeorge72) December 12, 2022

 

Do all the signs point to a very cold US the week and day of Christmas?

I checked a few long-range weather pages across the interwebs (nobody special), and they say Christmas and the surrounding days are not usually cold or precipitous. One predicts heavy rain.

And yet another says snow showers and chilly while (yet another) says extreme cold and heavy snow.

Fourteen days is a long time, and we won’t know until it arrives.

It kind of puts a bright light on all that by 2030, by 2050 nonsense, yes? But I’ll take a white Christmas any year. It’s not like I’m going anywhere that day (as long as I have internet).

 

 

HT | WUWT

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I think we can all agree that the NHGOP is failing and needs new leadership. Chairman Stepanek and Vice Chairman Tucker are not seeking re-election, which has opened the field to a variety of new candidates, with more likely forthcoming.

As a state committee member, I’m considering my options based on the following criteria: fundraising capabilities, messaging and marketing plans, strategy ideas, and vision for youth outreach.

Notice I have not included any political ideals. Party leadership does not need to closely agree with my personal politics because they do not create governmental policy. In fact, I’m not sure I want to know what their specific political views are because I want leaders to be neutral. To win, the NHGOP must be a big tent organization and leaders cannot alienate any faction of the party. My biggest issue with current leadership is their lack of impartiality. Leaders should not get involved in day-to-day politics of the state and should remain neutral to all Republicans.

FUNDRAISING CAPABILITIES

It’s no secret that the NHGOP was massively outspent by the NHDP. I have sat back and tried to figure out where the Democrats are getting their seemingly unlimited quantities of money, and while it might be through fraudulent means like FTX or some Ukrainian money-laundering scheme, the fact remains that we cannot win if we are outspent 20-1, as in the US Senate race. This is not something I’m personally good at, so I don’t have the answers, but I need to hear some type of vision for how to get the money.

MESSAGING AND MARKETING

The Democrats aren’t campaigning the way they used to. They aren’t taking the swing voter lists that we all have and creating nice messages about their plans for the future. They are marketing to new voters, or those I refer to as the “garbage can” voters. There has always been a large group of people that don’t vote. They tend to be apolitical, have zero political or economic knowledge, but Democrats have made them come out to vote more and more each election. Democrats employ a single message, not multiple messages, to this group of people. The message is not what the Democrats will do, but an attack against the other side, leaving Republicans constantly on the ropes, in defense mode. This year, it was “Republicans want to ban abortion”. This is a brilliant message because it’s not a lie. Republicans DO want to ban abortion; it’s in the platform. They have no practical plans to do so, but that’s too subtle a concept for this group of voters. We need our message to be an attack against the other side in the same manner. It needs to create a visceral response, and it needs to be simple, with enough truth in it.

STRATEGY

From my observations, Democrats had a sophisticated ground game. They had observers in many districts marking off voters as they arrived, and teams ready to deploy and pull voters out as the day went on. In other states, they have employed elaborate means of taking advantage of early and mail in voting. While both of those options were illegal in NH this past election cycle, they still aggressively pushed absentee voting and same day registration. Republicans find this distasteful because it feels unethical. I agree with the sentiment, and I hope to change laws in the future to tighten this up, but we cannot wait for that day to come. We must fight fire with fire. Republicans have had this defeatist mentality that elections are fraudulent, and they sit around and cry about it. I’m not saying zero illegal activity occurs, but it’s the unethical behavior, such as pushing same day registration, absentee voting, mail in voting, and early voting that is flipping elections in the left’s favor. I want NHGOP leadership to not only understand this, but be able to articulate it to the base and have a plan to do the same thing, so we don’t continue to lose. We cannot govern if we cannot win.

YOUTH OUTREACH

It is clear from exit polls nationally that Gen Z destroyed the red wave. I argue that the likely swing voters did break for us over the economy, just as polling suggested. But pollsters can’t poll those who don’t usually vote, and the 18-30 crowd doesn’t usually vote. Estimates suggest that the 2022 election was the second highest voter turnout for this age group in the last three decades. The reality is that the NHGOP completely ignored this group. I shockingly found out that the NHGOP doesn’t even have a list of the College Republican chapters in this state. You know that the NHDP not only has such a list, but they also have that group mobilized. Republicans laughed when Biden invited Tik Tok influencers to the White House, but we shouldn’t laugh; we should be doing the same thing. Tik Tok and Instagram are where the kids hang and NHGOP has obligatory accounts, but they don’t use them in any way to reach outside of their own echo chamber. I want to hear a serious social media strategy and a concrete plan to engage Gen Z from any NHGOP leadership candidate.

In short, a simple “I’ve been around and have experience” isn’t a good sell for my vote for NHGOP leadership. Your “experience” is likely from an outdated playbook. I know these are usually volunteer positions, but they are critical positions, and I am desperately hoping to see innovation and inspiration.

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There are few, if any, facets of the Climate Cult mythology we’ve not debunked. It’s fun and easy, but one of the latest lies is that the government can get us to Net Zero carbon emissions. We’ve covered some of that too, but what I’m about to share should end all debate. It can’t be done, even if we needed it.

Related: Net-Zero Reality: There Are Not Enough Resources To Make the Batteries and Replace Them Every Ten Years

Willis Eschenbach has a must-read post with updates at Watts Up With That that is worth your time. It is titled “Bright Green Impossibilities,” and it’s all about the math.

 

 I got to thinking about how impossible it will be for us to do what so many people are demanding that we do. This is to go to zero CO2 emissions by 2050 by getting off of fossil fuels.

So let’s take a look at the size of the problem. People generally have little idea just how much energy we get from fossil fuels.

 

Willis calculates our energy bottom line and then tries to determine how much of any or all the other alternatives we’d need to keep up.

 

So if we are going to zero emissions by 2050, we will need to replace about 193 petawatt-hours (1015 watt-hours) of fossil fuel energy per year. Since there are 8,766 hours in a year, we need to build and install about 193 PWhrs/year divided by 8766 hrs/year ≈ 22 terawatts (TW, or 1012 watts) of energy generating capacity.

 

You can take the entire walk with him if you’d like, but after pouring out some frighteningly impossible numbers and responding to commenter input, the bill comes due.

 

To summarize: to get the world to zero emissions by 2050, our options are to build, commission, and bring online either:

• One 2.1 gigawatt (GW, 109 watts) nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, OR

• 4000 two-megawatt (MW, 106 watts) wind turbines each and every day until 2050 plus a 2.1 GW nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, assuming there’s not one turbine failure for any reason, OR

• 100 square miles (250 square kilometres) of solar panels each and every day until 2050 plus a 2.1 GW nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, assuming not one of the panels fails or is destroyed by hail or wind.

 

It can’t be done. It’s a lie, and anyone connected to the energy industry (green or reliable) who tells you otherwise is lying. As was noted, we could get closer with nuclear, but not by 2050, and no one’s declaring a state of emergency to build any nuke plants – not that we’d get there from here if we started today instead of two years ago when Willis did the initial math (and those things aren’t cheap either).

Related: Anyone Who Supports Net-Zero Should Be Required to Address these Concerns (And Not Just Because they Can’t)

There also isn’t enough landmass for wind or solar to achieve those numbers, and no one wants to build nuke plants to back them up.

And we’ve not even touched on the cost. The Global Climate Cult has already wasted trillions if the goal is lowering CO2 emissions to go backward. If that’s not proof that they are the least qualified for the job, if it was even one that needed doing, then this should be. “Top consulting firm McKinsey has calculated that the net-zero emissions targets set by global governments and championed by the United Nations would cost the public a staggering $275 trillion by 2050, or around $30 billion per day for the next 25 years.”

That is probably a lowball number, especially without inflationary forces and supply and demand price pressures which would be enormous.

And then there’s that other emissions elephant in the room. The actual carbon cost of all the things that need doing to make all the things that are supposed to get us to Net Zero. You can’t make any of those things without coal. There aren’t enough rare earth metals to do it or, even based on the most forgiving estimates, replace the first round of batteries when they inevitably fail ten years later (or less).

None of this works without batteries.

Then there’s the energy or carbon cost of disposing of all those bits, little or none of which is recyclable.

And none of this math attempts to find electricity to do those things, so there’s that problem as well.

The solution to the problem of Net Zero is admitting they made it up, we don’t need it, and even if we did, it can’t be done. It’s a lie. When you encounter it out in the wild, show them Willis’ math.

It’s a long shot, but maybe they’ll begin to wonder about other possible lies.

 

 

HT | WUWT

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When it comes to Democrats, what you get never aligns with the shiny brochure of narratives they sell you – it’s usually the opposite. Take Black Lives Matter. Since the Summer of  2020, The Left couldn’t shut up about it, but since then, black men have been dying at a record-setting pace.

It’s as if they missed the memo about Black Lives Mattering, though I’m not sure how they could.

 

A study by the JAMA Network Open journal concluded that gun homicide rates among black men have exploded. The study concluded that about 55 black men were killed by firearms per 100,000, far beyond any other demographic group in America.

These numbers match those seen in the early 1990s, when violent crime was generally much higher. Nearly two decades of declining violent crime rates were wiped out in just a few years.

 

Some black lives must matter more than others.

Since the Left controls the narrative, this is NOT the result of Democrat-Run Urban Hellscape Planning. Reductions in policing can’t possibly be the reason for more crime – that’s just some white Republican conspiracy.

Second, since Democrats and their cities have common sense gun control, black men breaking those laws to shoot other black men the politicians have “disarmed” is not their fault. And Third, wacky Soros District Attorney’s dropping cash bail, refusing to prosecute criminals, and letting convicts out of jail has nothing to do with rising crime or homicide in the Black Community.

The problem is white people. They don’t shoot each other enough, the racists.

If the crackers spent more time using their white brothers for target practice like they do in Appalachia, all these black men killing each other wouldn’t look so bad.

 

And this, my god. The rate of gun homicides among Black men is right back to where it was at the height of the early 90’s wave of violence. Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to minimize the current resurgence. pic.twitter.com/GTFRzWCL5l

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) November 30, 2022

 

Alec MacGillis, he’s a white guy. He’s spreading rumors you could fix with a sharpie. Add a tail to the end of those other lines, and you get diversity and equity: nothing to see here. It’s all gun violence (despite the Lefty common sense laws) so there’s no other problem to solve except for the black community noticing how much worse things have gone for them since Democrats started saying, Black Lives Matter.

 

 

The post Not Enough White Men Are Killing Each Other and That’s Racist appeared first on Granite Grok.

Bill Gates recently got “the band” back together to play that “what if” a global pandemic board game he fancies. The last one was Event 201, and we all know how that turned out. This time the “virus” has a “higher fatality rate than COVID-19 and disproportionately affecting children and young people.”

I don’t mean to sound conspiratorial but talk about showing everyone your hand. They are coming for the children.

 

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in partnership with WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted Catastrophic Contagion, a pandemic tabletop exercise at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on October 23, 2022.

The extraordinary group of participants consisted of 10 current and former Health Ministers and senior public health officials from Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Singapore, India, Germany, as well as Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The exercise simulated a series of WHO emergency health advisory board meetings addressing a fictional pandemic set in the near future. Participants grappled with how to respond to an epidemic located in one part of the world that then spread rapidly, becoming a pandemic with a higher fatality rate than COVID-19 and disproportionately affecting children and young people.

Participants were challenged to make urgent policy decisions with limited information in the face of uncertainty. Each problem and choice had serious health, economic, and social ramifications. 

 

Motivations?

COVID didn’t wipe out enough aging baby boomers, and while the “cure” is severely damaging to the 18-49 age group, kids are the real problem. If you want to depopulate, wiping out an entire generation or two would get it done. With no one around to care for the elderly or infirm, they’d go away on their own.

And I know it sounds crazy, but it’s not a stretch after the last few years. The last response did more harm than the virus. We can’t expect better, nor can we assume that was not the point. The best response may be to end these WHO/Gates gaming sessions.

Here’s the simulation ad for the elite’s latest extinction event war game.

 

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Rumble("play", {"video":"v1xf7as","div":"rumble_v1xf7as"});

…

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