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      Pittsburgh official goes viral by rebuking Ted Cruz – and looking like Jeff Daniels

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      Rich Fitzgerald, the elected executive of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, has achieved viral internet fame – for rebuking the Republican senator Ted Cruz but also for looking remarkably like the Emmy-winning actor Jeff Daniels.
      When Joe Biden took the US back into the Paris climate accord this week, Cruz, from Texas, repeated a familiar rightwing complaint, saying the new Democratic president was “more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh”.
      Such barbs have been deflected before – not least by the mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, who reacted to Trump’s Paris withdrawal in 2017 by committing the city to the accord’s ambitious climate-related goals.
      Fitzgerald, a Democrat who attended Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, told local TV Cruz’s tweet was “outrageous”.
      “You know,” he said, “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s a climate denier. He was a Covid denier. We believe in science round here, and why Senator Cruz thinks he could tell Pittsburgh … we’re doing just fine.”
      Fitzgerald also pointed out Cruz’s role in encouraging Trump’s baseless claims that the presidential election was stolen, and his objections to electoral college results even after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, leaving five dead. Cruz nurtures presidential ambitions of his own but now faces calls for expulsion from the Senate.
      “This is a guy who was really part of the insurrection,” Fitzgerald said, “part of the denial of elections. So I don’t think this guy has any credibility. So, we’ll run what we need to do here, senator, and keep your nose out of our business.”
      Fitzgerald’s words reached a huge audience but, such are the ways of the internet, perhaps more for his distinct resemblance to the star of The Newsroom and To Kill a Mockingbird than for his appropriately Aaron Sorkin-esque decision to face down a rightwing bully.

      Jason Stapley
      (@jstaples01)
      He does have a Jeff Daniels vibe, should have ended the interview yelling this: https://t.co/sojkSlnyRL pic.twitter.com/ZcHEvtckvb

      January 22, 2021

      “Some days just shine down,” wrote Ryan Deto, a news editor for the Pittsburgh City Paper. “Rich Fitzgerald went viral for criticising Ted Cruz … then everyone on Twitter called him Jeff Daniels, and Daniels started to trend. #blessed.”
      Writing for the City Paper, Deto praised Fitzgerald’s “yinzer accent” and asked: “With his floppy mop of red hair and dad-like demeanour, who can fault anyone from making the comparison?”
      He also recounted another “humorous celebrity story” about the county executive, revealing: “A fun fact about Fitzgerald is that he once sang on stage with John Cougar Mellencamp at the Star Lake Amphitheater, just outside of Pittsburgh.
      “Jeff Daniels will never have that much yinzer cred.”
      Helpfully, in April 2019 the same paper offered readers a guide to “the yinzer vocabulary”. “Yinz”, it explained, is Pittsburgh for “y’all”. More

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      Police arrest woman FBI alleges stole Pelosi laptop to sell to Russia

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      Federal authorities have arrested a woman whose former romantic partner says she took a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the riot at the US Capitol.Riley June Williams was arrested on Monday, according to a justice department official. It is not yet known when her initial court appearance will be.The FBI said in an arrest warrant on Sunday that Williams hasn’t been charged with theft but only with illegally entering the Capitol and with disorderly conduct.FBI officials said a caller claiming to be an ex of Williams said friends of hers showed him a video of her taking a laptop computer or hard drive from Pelosi’s office. The caller alleged she intended to send the device to a friend in Russia who planned to sell it to that country’s foreign intelligence service, but that plan fell through and she either has the device or destroyed it. The FBI says the matter remains under investigation.Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, confirmed on 8 January that a laptop was taken from a conference room but said “it was a laptop that was only used for presentations”.Williams’ mother, who lives with her in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told ITV reporters that her daughter had taken a sudden interest in President Donald Trump’s politics and “far-right message boards”. Her father, who lives in Camp Hill, told local law enforcement that he and his daughter went to Washington on the day of the protest but didn’t stay together, meeting up later to return to Harrisburg, the FBI said.Williams’ mother told local law enforcement that her daughter packed a bag and left before she was arrested, saying she would be gone for a couple of weeks. She also changed her phone number and deleted a number of social media accounts, the FBI said. Court documents do not list an attorney for her. More

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      Inside the Billion-Dollar War Against Right-Wing Conspiracists

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySwayInside the Billion-Dollar War Against Right-Wing ConspiracistsJohn Poulos is the C.E.O. of Dominion Voting Systems. His $1.3 billion suit against an ex-Trump lawyer might be the “first step” in a powerful fight against actual fake news.Hosted by Kara SwisherMore episodes ofSwayJanuary 11, 2021  •  More

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      in Elections

      Pennsylvania man is accused of casting Trump vote for his dead mother.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationPennsylvania man is accused of casting Trump vote for his dead mother.Dec. 23, 2020, 2:36 p.m. ETDec. 23, 2020, 2:36 p.m. ETShortly after the November election, the Trump campaign circulated on its Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as its website, the names of seven dead Americans in the battleground states of Georgia and Pennsylvania. The dead people were used to cast votes in last month’s election, the campaign claimed, pointing to the incidents as evidence of widespread voter fraud that enabled President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Local officials have debunked several of the dead-voter claims, and there remains no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But now, Pennsylvania officials say one of the names held up by the Trump campaign was used to cast a vote in the election.Here’s the catch: Authorities say the fraudulent vote was cast for Mr. Trump.This week, Jack Stollsteimer, the district attorney of Delaware County, accused Bruce Bartman of Marple Township, Pa., of illegally voting in place of his deceased mother in the general election. In addition to his mother, Mr. Bartman registered his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Weihman, who died in 2019, as a voter, according to the district attorney’s office, but is not accused of voting for her. He also cast a ballot under his own name.The Trump campaign circulated claims of voter fraud on its social media accounts. Local officials have debunked several of the claims.“This is the only known case of a ‘dead person’ voting in our county, conspiracy theories notwithstanding,” Mr. Stollsteimer said in a statement. “The prompt prosecution of this case shows that law enforcement will continue to uphold our election laws whenever presented with actual evidence of fraud and that we will continue to investigate every allegation that comes our way.”Samuel Stretton, a lawyer for Mr. Bartman, said: “He’s admitted everything. He’s cooperated.” Mr. Stretton added that he was negotiating a guilty plea, and that Mr. Bartman had no criminal record.“He’s a good man,” Mr. Stretton said. “He did something very stupid under some misguided theory that this was his form of protest.”In an interview with The New York Times in November after the Trump campaign first made its claims, Mr. Bartman said he did not recall seeing a mail-in ballot for his mother. “Oh, no, no, I haven’t gotten anything,” he said. “Occasionally I would get some junk mail for her. But not in several years.”He added that he did not hear of the Trump campaign’s allegation because he did not use social media much and only infrequently logged on to Facebook to see pictures of his grandchildren.Asked whether he knew why a vote for his mother would have been recorded despite her having passed away, he said the state’s governor, Tom Wolf, “doesn’t know anything or what’s going on in the city of Philadelphia, or the surrounding counties in the middle part of the state.”“Some of the stuff that has gone on in Philadelphia is just atrocious,” Mr. Bartman added.Mr. Stretton, his lawyer, said, “He was wrong in saying that, he admits he was wrong, and since he was approached by the detectives, he has cooperated and told the truth.”The claim that a vote was fraudulently cast using Elizabeth Bartman’s name and that it was emblematic of systemic voter fraud helping Mr. Biden spread widely online. On Facebook, articles with the claim from the conservative websites ZeroHedge and The Epoch Times were shared 1,800 times and reached up to 61 million followers, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      States targeted in Texas election fraud lawsuit condemn 'cacophony of bogus claims'

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      Attorneys general from both parties reject baseless allegations in case filed with US supreme courtGeorgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Thursday urged the US supreme court to reject a lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Donald Trump seeking to undo Joe Biden’s victory, saying the case has no factual or legal grounds and makes “bogus” claims.“What Texas is doing in this proceeding is to ask this court to reconsider a mass of baseless claims about problems with the election that have already been considered, and rejected, by this court and other courts,” Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general, wrote in a filing to the nine justices. Continue reading… More

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      in Elections

      Even in Defeat, Trump Tightens Grip on State G.O.P. Lawmakers

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEven in Defeat, Trump Tightens Grip on State G.O.P. LawmakersIn Pennsylvania, the president’s false claims of a rigged vote may inflame the party base for years to come. One lawmaker said that refusing to back up his assertions would “get my house bombed.”President Trump has twisted the arms of state lawmakers in an effort to overturn the election results.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesDec. 9, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETLast week, allies of President Trump accused Republican leaders in Pennsylvania of being “cowards” and “liars” and of letting America down.Mr. Trump himself called top Republicans in the General Assembly in his crusade to twist the arms of officials in several states and reverse an election he lost. The Pennsylvania lawmakers told the president they had no power to convene a special session to address his grievances.But they also rewarded his efforts: On Friday, the State House speaker and majority leader joined hard-right colleagues — whom they had earlier resisted — and called on Congress to reject Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 81,000-vote victory in Pennsylvania.The extraordinary intervention by the president, and the willingness of some top party leaders to abet his effort to subvert an election, demonstrates how Mr. Trump’s sway over elected Republicans is likely to endure after he leaves office and how his false claims of a “rigged” 2020 vote may inflame the party base for years to come.Courts across the country have summarily thrown out Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election. But 64 Republicans in the General Assembly signed a letter last week urging Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation to reject the state’s Electoral College votes for Mr. Biden. Kim Ward, the Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania Senate, said the president had called her to declare there was fraud in the voting. But she said she had not been shown the letter to Congress, which was pulled together hastily, before its release.Asked if she would have signed it, she indicated that the Republican base expected party leaders to back up Mr. Trump’s claims — or to face its wrath.“If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’” she said about signing the letter, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”A major issue facing Republicans everywhere, including those in Pennsylvania — where open seats for governor and the U.S. Senate are on the ballot in 2022 — is whether the party will put forward Trump-aligned candidates in future races. The president lost Pennsylvania, but Republicans made down-ballot gains in two statewide races and picked up seats in the legislature.“Those who are continuing to beat on this drum that the election was rigged are trying to appease Trump’s base and get their support early on,” said State Representative Ryan Bizzarro, a member of the Democratic leadership.Mr. Bizzarro said it would be a gift to Democrats if the Republican nominees for governor or Senate who emerge from primaries are remembered for echoing Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of mass fraud from mail-in ballots and his bitter-end resistance to conceding a loss.A pro-Trump rally outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The court later threw out a case seeking to invalidate Pennsylvania’s mail-in votes.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“Forget all the Democrats who voted by mail — look at all the Republicans who voted by mail,” he said. “Are you saying their voice isn’t as important as the fringe who are blind to facts and the ways our Constitution clearly lays out elections?”On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court became the latest of dozens of tribunals to throw out a case brought by Trump allies, in this instance a Pennsylvania congressman and a losing congressional candidate. They had sought to invalidate the state’s 2.6 million mail-in votes, 77 percent of which were cast for Mr. Biden.Republicans argued that a 2019 state law authorizing no-excuse mail voting was unconstitutional, although it passed the Republican-led legislature and was signed by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.Earlier, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against the same plaintiffs, one of whom was Sean Parnell, a former Army Ranger and a favorite of Mr. Trump’s who occasionally appears on Fox News. He lost his race for Congress to Representative Conor Lamb but has been mentioned as a potential statewide candidate in 2022.A Republican strategist in Pennsylvania, Charlie Gerow, expressed doubts that the trench fighting by party members over the legitimacy of the election would cast a stigma over Republicans in the midterm elections. “There will be so many candidates for statewide office that what happens in December 2020 will have very little bearing, in my judgment, on what happens in 2022,” he said.Nearly every state has certified the results of its election, and Mr. Biden has secured the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next president when the Electoral College meets on Monday.Nonetheless, the more than 60 Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature — about half of the party’s total caucus — urged Congress to take one last stand for Mr. Trump and object to the state’s Biden electors.Tracking Disinformation More