Dominion Voting tells Facebook, Parler and other social media sites to preserve posts for lawsuits

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SAN FRANCISCO — Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems have asked Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Parler to preserve posts about the company, even if the material was already removed for spreading misinformation.

The posts need to be kept “because they are relevant to Dominion’s defamation claims relating to false accusations that Dominion rigged the 2020 election,” according to the demand letters from Dominion’s law firm Clare Locke. Dominion sued Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell for more than $1.3 billion each in January, alleging that the lawyers defamed Dominion by saying the machines were used to steal the election from President Donald Trump.

Dominion asked each company to keep posts from slightly differing lists of people. Those included right-wing pundit Dan Bongino, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Powell. It also included news organizations Fox News, One America News Network and Newsmax and — in Twitter’s case — Trump. Continue reading.

Why Cognitive Dissonance Makes Trumpsters Flee To Their ‘Bizarro World’

One of the most jarring aspects of watching Fox News or One America News Network is the mental gymnastics President Donald Trump’s supporters must perform in his defense. Being a Trump supporter often means defending the indefensible. Journalist Anne Applebaum describes those extremes in an article published in The Atlantic, stressing that their defenses of the president require a total defiance of logic and reason.

Applebaum cites Trump loyalist William B. Crews as one of the wildest examples. Crews, Applebaum notes, was an employee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by expert immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci. Crews, the Daily Beast‘s Lachlan Markey recently reported, was angry because Fauci’s messages on the coronavirus pandemic sometimes conflicted with what Trump had to say — and Crews responded by attacking Fauci on the Red State website using the pen name “Streiff.”

As “Streiff,” Applebaum notes, Crews also defended Trump on everything from the Ukraine scandal to the George Floyd protests. Continue reading.

Bannon Teams Up With Chinese Group That Thinks Trump Will Bring on End-Times

Steve Bannon made a fiercely anti-China movie for some of the Chinese government’s biggest foes.

After trying to launch his own cryptocurrency and failing to turn an Italian monastery into a training camp for Europe’s far right, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has a new plan: teaming up with a Chinese spiritual movement that reportedly believes Trump will bring about Judgment Day.

On Saturday night, viewers of the rabidly pro-Trump cable news channel One America News Network will witness the premiere of Bannon’s latest effort, a ripped-from-the-headlines political thriller modeled after the real-life legal battle that ensued following the arrest of an executive for Chinese tech company Huawei in Canada.

Bannon didn’t exact for subtlety as the executive producer of the film, Claws of the Red Dragon. Chinese communist officials in the movie meet in shadowy rooms to discuss the utmost importance of their “secret plan,” while an intrepid reporter investigating Huawei stand-in “Huaxing” finds a dead cat left on her car in warning. In a Bannonian touch at the end, viewers are left with an Edmund Burke quote warning that evil triumphs when “good men do nothing.”

View the complete October 19 article by Will Sommers on the Daily Beast website here.