This week, The New York Times ran a long piece re-reporting a supposed race scandal from Smith College. The scandal, originally reported in midsummer 2018, featured a black student, Oumou Kanoute, who claimed that she was racially profiled while eating in a dormitory lounge. She suggested in a Facebook post that she was confronted by a campus police officer, who might have been carrying a “lethal weapon,” and a janitor, adding: “All I did was be Black. It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”
The janitor was placed on paid leave. The college president issued a campuswide statement explaining, “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives.”
The incident was reported by establishment media outlets far and wide.
There was only one problem: It was a lie.
A full investigation by an outside law firm found no evidence of bias. Kanoute was eating in a closed dormitory, and the janitor was doing his job. The campus police officer had no weapon.
So, did The Times apologize for its original coverage? Of course not. It turned the story into an investigation of supposed structural biases based on race and class. In one of the more astonishing sentences ever written in a major newspaper, The Times reported, “The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.”
For those who speak English, this sentence translates thusly: The story highlights the tensions between lies and the truth. But for those who speak the wokeabulary, this sentence actually makes equivalence between lies told on behalf of a self-serving victim narrative and factual truth. The two must be balanced against each other, not one dismissed for its patent falsehood.
Congress appears to be passing up an opportunity to address the issue of dark money in politics following past bipartisan attempts.
This comes as tensions appear to be growing on Capitol Hill over sweeping election reform proposed by House Democrats, which is something they said they would do last fall.
“We’re going to have H.R.1 right off the bat,” stated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “This is about cleaner government, so we can reduce the role of big, dark special interest money.”
@SpeakerPelosi has said that House Democrats in the next Congress are going to pass H.R. 1 “right off the bat.” This is great news for our democracy. We have to tackle the voter suppression, gerrymandering and dark money that have corrupted our nation for too long. pic.twitter.com/ajgXCMMqPt
Lawmakers are mostly sparring over provisions that would federalize the election process among other related items.
“The bill would allow the sitting president to effectively appoint a majority at the FEC in his party,” explained David Keating, President of the Institute for Free Speech.
However, the debate is taking attention away from a problem both Democrats and Republicans have previously flagged: dark money.
Part of Democrats’ pitch in favor of election bill H.R.1 notes it shines a light on dark money in politics by enforcing transparency. They said it would boost online political ad disclosure and require organizations to disclose their large donors, but Republicans argue the proposal would push lawmakers to profit off elections.
“Members of Congress are able to funnel campaign contributions into their personal bank accounts by simply hiring their spouses as campaign consultants,” stated Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.). “In fact, one high profile member of the body — this body — exploited this loophole top the tune of $2.8 million in the last election cycle.”
By attaching unrelated items to the legislation, Democrats appear to be killing any chance of bipartisan reform when it comes to election spending. Republican lawmakers and other conservatives said they are doing so at the expense of the First Amendment.
“There’s about half of the bill that would restrict speech about campaigns, would restrict speech about members of Congress, would restrict speech about legislation coming up with in Congress,” Keating explained. “It would also get rid of the internet exception where organizations are allowed to speak to the public using websites like YouTube or social media.”
H.R. 1 allows political campaigns to be funded by federal money, undermines state voter ID laws, and enables ballot harvesting. This is a bad bill, and I oppose it. pic.twitter.com/Nku5ZuphyY
Free speech advocates like Keating have warned that advocacy groups ranging from the Chamber of Commerce to the Sierra Club to pro-gun groups will likely be impacted. It would make their work more difficult. Opponents of H.R.1 are urging Congress against passing the legislation and, instead, consider reworking it to uphold free speech.
Facebook will lift its temporary ban on political advertising in the United States on Thursday, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.
The social media giant has had a months-long freeze on political, electoral and social ads, which it introduced as part of an effort to crack down on misinformation and abuses around the Nov. 3 elections.
Facebook had temporarily lifted its ad pause in Georgia for the state’s January runoff elections but put it back in place.
Alphabet Inc’s Google, which had lifted its own political ad ban in December, later reinstated it following the Jan. 6 siege at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Google lifted the ban last week.
Democratic and Republican digital strategists have argued that such bans were overly broad and failed to combat the issue of organic misinformation on the platforms.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) issued a statement criticizing Facebook for not committing to a clear date to end the ban, saying the freeze had made it harder for campaigns and organizations to reach voters.
Facebook, which noted in its blog post that its systems do not distinguish between political and electoral ads and “social issue” ads, said it would look in the coming months at what other changes to its ads might be needed.
Parler, a social media app popular among conservatives, filed a new lawsuit accusing Amazon.com Inc of trying to destroy its business following the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit seeking a variety of damages, including triple damages for anticompetitive conduct, was filed in Washington state court on Tuesday, two weeks after Parler returned online following a monthlong absence.
Parler went dark when Amazon suspended its web-hosting services following the Capitol attack, saying Parler had failed to effectively moderate violent content on its website.
The new lawsuit came as Parler voluntarily dismissed a federal lawsuit against Amazon over that suspension on Tuesday, the deadline to file an amended complaint.
Parler’s new lawsuit accused Amazon of a slew of contractual violations, and like the original case said Amazon shut it down to benefit a new client, Twitter Inc.
The app said it was worth $1 billion and about to seek funding when Seattle-based Amazon pulled the plug, costing it tens of millions of users and hundreds of millions of dollars of annual ad revenue.
“When companies are this big, it’s easy to be a bully,” Parler said, calling itself “a victim of Amazon’s efforts to destroy an up-and-coming technology company through deceptive, defamatory, anticompetitive, and bad faith conduct.”
An Amazon spokesman said the new claims have no merit, and that it “provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum.”
Parler has said there was a lack of evidence it helped incite the Capitol riot, but the judge in the federal case on Jan. 21 refused to order Amazon to resume services.
The relaunch effectively mooted Parler’s claim that Amazon put it out of business.
Parler has said its new platform was built on “sustainable, independent technology.”
SkySilk, a Los Angeles-based company, said it was providing private cloud infrastructure.
Google also removed the Parler app from its Play Store and Apple removed it from its App Store.
The Veritas Forum, a nonprofit group that explores truth and life through various disciplines, including religion and science, apologized Monday and canceled a discussion on critical race theory after critics pointed out that one of their featured speakers was not a leading expert on race and Christianity.
Willie James Jennings, an associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale Divinity School, and Neil Shenvi, a blogger with a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry, were set to discuss whether a secular worldview like critical race theory can address racism or if Christianity provides a unique response.
The flyer for the canceled Veritas Forum on race and reconciliation. | Facebook/Veritas Forum at the University of Washington
“How does racism manifest itself today? Can a secular worldview provide a grounds for addressing such evils, or does Christianity yield a unique response? Is Critical Theory an epistemically justified and useful tool in the fight against modern injustices?” the promotion for the forum asked. “Leading experts on the topic of race and Christianity Dr. Willie Jennings and Dr. Neil Shenvi will engage in a thought-provoking virtual dialogue at this year’s Veritas Forum.”
The forum, which was sponsored by the University of Washington chapter of Ratio Christi, an apologetics evangelism organization that “builds thoughtful Christians and shares compelling reasons for following Christ at universities,” quickly came under fire from critics, including several academics, for describing Shenvi as a leading expert on the subject matter.
“That’s just flat-out dishonest. @veritasforum, please take that language down. In what world?” Samuel Perry, associate professor in the department of sociology at the University of Oklahoma, whose research areas include religion, culture, families and race, asked in a tweet Monday evening.
“Even if we were to practice the philosophical exercise of hypothesizing what alternate realities ‘could’ exist; in what possible world would Neil be an expert on Race & Christianity @veritasforum? Whatever possible world in which that reality exists, it isn’t in this one,” theologian Kyle J. Howard argued in another tweet.
Several hours later on Monday night, Veritas Forum announced the cancellation of the event, along with a mea culpa in a statement on Twitter.
“We have canceled the Veritas Forum on race and reconciliation that was scheduled to take place on Thursday, March 4,” the group said.
“At Veritas, we value rigor and respect around life’s most important questions, inviting those with opposing worldviews to the table, and expertise as well as honesty and truth. We also value critique, learning, and admitting our mistakes,” they explained. “We failed to live up to our values. We did not pair one scholar with relevant subject-matter expertise with another of equal expertise, and we did not describe their credentials accurately. We also recognize that there are deeper racial dynamics at play, and we lament any pain that we caused. We apologize.”
Shenvi told The Christian Post in an interview Tuesday that while he agrees it “was a mistake” for the forum to promote him as a leading expert on race, he believes the discussion could have continued.
“I’m disappointed. I was looking forward to it, I prepared a bunch, but these things happen. There’s not much I can do,” he said.
“The Veritas Forum did list me as a leading expert on race, which I certainly am not, prof[essor] Jennings certainly is,” he added, while making it clear that there is nothing wrong with a debate between an expert and a non-expert. As long as both parties agree to the debate, he said he did not see it as a problem.
“If they agree to do it, it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with doing it. The Veritas Forum had other experts of various kinds dialogue with non-experts,” he said.
“If I ended up having bad arguments, I think that would have been exposed in the dialogue. The aim of these dialogues is to get to truth, to hear both sides. Both before and after the event was canceled, people talked to me and expressed disappointment because they wanted to hear that dialogue,” he added.
Jennings did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CP on Tuesday, but The Veritas Forum received mixed reactions for canceling the discussion between the race scholar and Shenvi.
“Well done. Have the debates, but don’t disrespect a world-class black scholar by pairing him with a Blogger who has already demonstrated ineptitude in understanding both sociology & theology, and in late their credentials. Thanks @veritasforum,” wrote Howard on Twitter.
Eric Reed, pastor of the Journey Church in Tennessee, called the cancellation “weak.”
“This is weak. There’s a reason why Veritas Forum invited Neil to participate in the event, but progressive Twitter got angry. If he’s so unqualified, let him get up there and get humiliated by his lack of knowledge … if that’s really the issue. We’re becoming such pansies,” Reed wrote on Twitter.
Critical race theory, as explained by Purdue University, “is a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression.” Through this framework, scholars seek to “understand how victims of systemic racism are affected by cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice.”
The subject matter has been controversial, especially in evangelical circles in recent years. In summer 2019, the Southern Baptist Convention passed Resolution 9, “On Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality,” with much dissent.
It notes in part that while “critical race theory and intersectionality alone are insufficient to diagnose and redress the root causes of the social ills that they identify, which result from sin…these analytical tools can aid in evaluating a variety of human experiences.”
In recent months in the wake of racial protests, Southern Baptists like Texas Pastor Dwight McKissic Sr. have argued there is a growing movement to rescind it.
Christopher Lee Bolt, a pastor-teacher at Elkton Baptist Church in Tennessee and head of theology at Legacy Bible College, said Tuesday that the arguments against Shenvi speaking at the Veritas Forum is evidence of why he believes SBC Resolution 9 should not have been adopted.
“The arguments against Neil Shenvi speaking at something like the Veritas Forum because he is said to lack the proper expertise in the area of Critical Race Theory is the main reason I now believe Resolution 9 should have never come to the floor at the Southern Baptist Convention,” he said.
Shenvi told CP on Tuesday that he had been planning to use respected professor of sociology at Baylor University, George Yancey’s model of mutual accountability for the discussion.
He then quoted the closing line of the opening statement he had planned to deliver at the forum.
“We need to talk to each other rather than yell at each other. We need to call each other brother and sister rather than call each other racist and Marxist. So let’s reject unbiblical approaches to fighting racism and embrace a better one,” he said.
Beijing insists the procedure is more accurate than other methods.
China has decided to require international travelers entering the country to undergo anal swab procedures to test for COVID-19, a method the communist nation insists is more accurate than other on-the-spot mechanisms for detecting the disease.
The Times out of the UK reported Wednesday that China has now made the tests “compulsory,” in a move the newspaper says deepened “a row with other countries over a practice many have described as humiliating.”
What are the details?
According to the New York Post, the Times claims that “as part of the new travel requirement, there will be testing hubs in Beijing and Shanghai airports.” The Sun reported that “the procedure involved inserting a cotton swab about three to five centimeters into the anus and gently rotating it.”
Beijing insists that anal swabs are more accurate than nasal or throat swab tests.
Li Tongzeng, a Chinese respiratory and infectious disease expert, explained to the media last month that the anal swabbing can “avoid missing infections as virus traces are detectable for a longer time than the more common COVID tests used in the mouth and nose.”
As TheBlaze previously reported, Li insisted at the time “that the tests were only necessary for certain populations, such as those under quarantine orders.”
But the news of the widespread mandate comes after the United States and Japan issued separate complaints to China after diplomats from both nations were forced to provide fecal samples via the invasive method.
American diplomats cry foul
Last week, the U.S. State Department protested to China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs after American diplomats cried foul over being subjected to anal swab tests, which “Washington has slammed as ‘undignified,’ according to The Sun.
The Chinese Communist Party has denied that it subjected American diplomats to rectal probing, but then Japan complained this week that the anal swabs were conducted on their diplomats upon entry to China.
Katsunobu Kato, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said during a news conference, “Some Japanese reported to our embassy in China that they received anal swab tests, which caused a great psychological pain.”
However, Chinese physician Lu Hongzhou suggested on state-run media that foreigners do have an alternative to the swab test upon arrival in the country: providing a stool sample.
Government data show that, compared with the Pfizer vaccine, there have been 43% more reports of injuries related to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, including 77% more adverse events and 25% more deaths — but no red flags from UK regulators.
Between Dec. 9, 2020 (when the first COVID vaccine was administered in the UK) and Feb. 14, 2021, 402 deaths following COVID vaccines have been reported to YellowCard, the UK government’s system for reporting side effects to COVID-related medicines, vaccines, devices, and defective or falsified products.
So far, only the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines have been administered in the UK. The Pfizer vaccine was deployed during the second week of December 2020, and Oxford-AstraZeneca at the beginning of January. (Moderna’s COVID vaccine is approved for emergency use in the UK, but the country has not as of yet obtained any vaccines from the company).
The MHRA has expressed no concern about the number of reports of adverse events connected with these new products, even failing to note how much worse the Oxford product has performed in comparison to the Pfizer vaccine.
Similarly, the accumulation of hundreds of deaths has failed to register a flicker of concern from them.
In January, the deaths of 23 frail elderly in Norway made international news — and raised questions about whether we should even be vaccinating people who are already near death. While it’s true that thousands of frail elderly people inevitably die every week, the lack of evidence of an active attempt to find out what is going on in individual cases is troubling.
The MHRA responded to the Norwegian report by saying “it did not currently anticipate any specific concerns,” a highly prejudicial statement. At the time The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) permitted a short on-line response from me under the title “Is the MHRA up to it?”:
“But the MHRA also did not detect concerns with narcolepsy and the Pandemrix vaccine in 2009 and was unapologetic nine years on in these columns (while Clifford Miller going through the available data found as many as 178 potentially related reports in the first 67 days) … More recently they did not anticipate problems with PEG and anaphylaxis before the rollout of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, though these were already identified by others…”
However, it is even more worrying that even after 400 reported deaths the British Medical Journal will not publish my letter critiquing the MHRA data.
A major difficulty is that the MHRA system breaks down the data so that it is impossible to connect these deaths with preceding adverse events, although most reports are said to include multiple reactions.
Yet it is reasonable to assume that the preponderance of these reported deaths were preceded by a sequence of events — otherwise no one would have thought to make a report. However, the YellowCard format masks this information.
As with any passive reporting database we are met with the paradox that no single vaccine death is confirmed (and any doctor who confirmed one would likely say good-bye to their career in the UK). We also know vaccine-related injuries are generally under-reported by many times.
Nevertheless, the very distinct event profiles of two products filtered through the same same system after 15 million vaccine administrations would suggest that there is something to be investigated and explained.
The BMJ has declined to publish my successive letters on the subject of investigating COVID vaccine injuries and deaths, but here’s my latest (unpublished) letter to the publication:
Dear Editor:
Paul Thacker raises important concerns over transparency and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, but I believe there are also questions about safety.
In January, eyebrows were raised because of 23 deaths in frail elderly Norwegian patients following the Pfizer vaccine. Since then we seem to have come a dangerous distance.
It is also remarkable how unfavorably the Oxford-AstraZeneca data compare with the Pfizer data. MHRA data show 26,823 reports related to Pfizer vaccines, including 77,207 reactions, and 31,427 reports related to Oxford-AstraZeneca, including 114,625 reactions.
Thus the Pfizer reports run at ~3.2 per 1,000 while the Oxford-AstraZeneca reports run at ~4.6 per 1,000: which translates to 43% more reports associated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine compared with Pfizer.
However, the Pfizer reports have an average of 2.9 reactions per report compared with 3.6 for the Oxford-AstraZeneca (again Oxford 24% higher) — so the rate of reactions reported is actually 77% higher overall for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
When it comes to fatalities, the Oxford-AstraZeneca product records a rate of 3 in 100,000 while Pfizer has 2.4 in 100,000 which is again 25% higher for Oxford-AstraZeneca.
Tabulated, as of 14 Feb:
Pfizer BioNTech: 26,823 reports, 77, 207 reactions and 197 deaths (per 8.3 million doses).
Oxford Astra Zeneca: 31,427 reports, 114,625 reactions and 205 deaths (per 6.9 million doses)
Pfizer BioNTech:
Reports 1 in 309.5 doses
Reactions 2.9 per report
Fatal reactions 1 in 42,131
Oxford AstraZeneca:
Reports 1 in 219.5 doses
Reactions 3.6 per report
Fatal reactions 1 in 33,659
It is important to recognize that these data are by no means random: The reports are filtered through the same system (even though it is passive and likely to represent only a fraction of cases) and these products have quite distinct profiles.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca safety profile should also be borne in mind considering that the company is planning to conduct trials with children.
Whether it is ethical to administer vaccines with such open safety issues is one thing, but it is another when the data from one product seems to be so markedly inferior to the other.
Note that the linked MHRA documents (here, here and here) have a rolling update and this data will only be correct for the week Feb. 26 – March 4, 2021.
Finally, I would be grateful to have any errors of transcription or mathematics pointed out to me.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says President Joe Biden is “recklessly releasing” illegal aliens into the state of Texas after they have tested positive for the Chinese coronavirus.
A report by NBC News this week confirmed that Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is releasing border crossers into the U.S. interior who then are testing positive for the coronavirus. Even after border crossers test positive, they are not required to quarantine.
Abbott, in a statement on Wednesday evening, wrote that the Biden administration “must immediately end” the Catch and Release policy.
“The Biden Administration is recklessly releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants who have COVID into Texas communities,” Abbott wrote in a post. “The Biden Admin. must IMMEDIATELY end this callous act that exposes Texans & Americans to COVID.”
The Biden Administration is recklessly releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants who have COVID into Texas communities.
The Biden Admin. must IMMEDIATELY end this callous act that exposes Texans & Americans to COVID.
In Brownsville, Texas, DHS is sending border crossers into the community where local health officials then must test them. Regardless of a negative or positive test result, the border crossers are allowed to continue traveling into the U.S. interior — many heading to Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina.
Since Brownsville officials started testing released border crossers, about 6.3 percent or nearly 110 have tested positive for the coronavirus and are sent on their way.
Similarly, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) called Biden’s Catch and Release policy an “anti-America First and anti-science” iniative.
“Illegal aliens with COVID-19 are being caught and then released into the United States,” Brooks wrote in a post. “This is anti-America First and anti-Science. Socialist Dems have built a wall around the Capitol to protect themselves, but won’t protect you!”
Illegal aliens with COVID-19 are being caught and then released into the United States. This is anti-America First and anti-Science. Socialist Dems have built a wall around the Capitol to protect themselves, but won't protect you! https://t.co/FyXmvcdds9
As Breitbart News noted, millions of Americans remain under business restrictions, mask mandates, and quarantine requirements due to the coronavirus crisis, even as coronavirus-positive border crossers are not held to any requirements except public mask mandates where they are enforced.
Biden’s Catch and Release policy has proven unpopular with Americans. In a Harvard/Harris poll conducted last month of nearly 1,800 registered voters, 67 percent said border crossers should be returned to Mexico — as they were under the Remain in Mexico policy that Biden ended — while just 33 percent said they should be released into the U.S. interior.
“In other words, the goal is to censor those with whom the authors of the bill disagree,” wrote the attorneys general.
Twenty Republican state attorneys general signed a letter denouncing the House Democrats’ controversial election reform bill as unconstitutional for a slew of reasons just hours before the measure was expected to be voted on.
The letter — led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita — tore into H.R. 1, the “For the People Act,” a massive election reform bill and a leading priority for House Democrats this Congress.
“This monstrosity of a bill betrays the Constitution, dangerously federalizes state elections, and undermines the integrity of the ballot box,” Rokita said in a statement to Fox News. “As a former chief election officer, and now an Attorney General, I know this would be a disaster for election integrity and confidence in the processes that have been developed over time to instill confidence in the idea of ‘one person, one vote.’”
The attorneys general said the bill “betrays several Constitutional deficiencies and alarming mandates” that would “federalize” statewide elections across America and that “states have principal —and with presidential elections, exclusive — responsibility to safeguard” how they hold elections under the Constitution.
“The Act would invert that constitutional structure, commandeer state resources, confuse and muddle elections procedures, and erode faith in our elections and systems of governance,” they wrote.
They then warned lawmakers that they “may wish to consider the Act’s constitutional vulnerabilities as well as the policy critiques of state officials.”
The twenty attorneys general marched on in their letter, arguing that the For the People Act “implicates the Electors Clause” of the Constitution. The Electors Clause guarantees each state legislature the right to “direct allotment of presidential electors, and separately affords Congress only the more limited power to ‘determine the Time of chusing the Electors.’”
The attorneys general argued that this “exclusive division of power” outlined in the Constitution “differs markedly” from the Election Clause in Article I of the Constitution, “which says that both States and Congress have the power to regulate the ‘time, place, and manner’ of congressional elections.”
“That distinction is not an accident of drafting,” wrote the multi-state legal team. “After extensive debate, the Constitution’s Framers deliberately excluded Congress from deciding how presidential electors would be chosen in order to avoid presidential dependence on Congress for position and authority.”
The group then pointed to the 1892 Supreme Court case McPherson v. Blacker that “[upheld] a Michigan statute apportioning presidential electors by district.”
“The exclusivity of state power to ‘define the method’ of choosing presidential electors means that Congress may not force states to permit presidential voting by mail or curbside voting, for example,” the group wrote.
The group pointed to a 2019 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, where Roberts “noted with respect to congressional elections, the Framers ‘assign[ed] the issue to the state legislatures, expressly checked and balanced by the Federal Congress.'” They then blasted the bill as not having Congress act “as a check, but is instead overreaching by seizing the role of principal election regulator.”
The attorneys general torched the bill’s “constitutional deficiencies” as “only the beginning of the Act’s problems” and that, “[a]s a matter of election administration policy, it is difficult to imagine a legislative proposal more threatening to election integrity and voter confidence.”
They took aim at the For the People Act’s “limitations” on voter identification laws, roasting the act as doing “little to ensure voters say who they are” and pointing out that “requiring” a government ID to vote in an election “represents nothing more than a best practice for election administration.”
“Government-issued photo identification has been the global standard for documentary identification for decades,” the lawyers wrote, saying that “nearly twenty years ago” the Help America Vote Act required proof of identification for “first-time voters who register by mail without proof of identification.”
They continued on to say that Help America Vote Act “required” said voters to “present identification either to the county voter-registration office or at the polls.”
“Worse, it vitiates the capacity of voter ID requirements to protect against improper interference with voting rights,” the letter reads. The attorneys general went on to say the act was “not a fair election law” as it does not “treat all voters equally.”
The letter also argued that the bill would “limit how states maintain voter registration rolls” while ensuring integrity in elections, saying that “under the act,” states “could not use a combination of voter inactivity and unresponsiveness to maintain voter lists.” Instead, under the act states may “remove illegitimate voter registrations” when officials have “some other unspecified ‘objective and reliable evidence'” that the person isn’t eligible to vote.
The attorneys general wrote that “this attack on reliable methods” states have been using to “maintain voter lists without specifying any reasonable permissible alternatives belies any actual interest in preventing voter fraud.”
“The objective, rather, seems to be to prevent meaningful voter list maintenance altogether,” the letter read.
The lawyers then slammed the “so-called ‘independent’ commissions” that states would be required to use when redrawing congressional district lines after each census under the For the People Act. The attorneys wrote that the “aim” of the “provision” was to end “‘political gerrymandering'” and that the reason behind the provision was the “incoherent supposition that drawing congressional districts is something other than a political act.”
They argued that, “as with any legislation,” redrawing congressional districts “requires officials to balance legitimate competing considerations, and in so doing advance some political interests over others.”
“At least when legislatures draw boundary lines voters may punish egregious behavior at the next election; not so with government-by-commission, which trades accountability for mythical expertise and disinterest,” the team wrote.
“With respect to political redistricting, no ideal, perfectly balanced congressional boundaries exist, so we should let the people decide, through their elected officials, where to place them,” they continued.
To round off their letter calling on Congress to rethink H.R. 1, the attorneys general blasted the bill’s “requirement that political speakers disclose their donor lists.” The group said the bill “reflects an objective to name, shame, and blacklist” those who have “different or minority viewpoints.”
“In other words, the goal is to censor those with whom the authors of the bill disagree,” wrote the attorneys general.
“In the American tradition, the antidote for bad speech is more speech, not less,” they continued. “When people and organizations carry their chosen messages into the public arena, government should not cater to those who would intimidate or disrupt that same speech.”
The group of twenty attorneys general finished the letter promising that, should the For the People Act become law, they would “seek legal remedies to protect the Constitution, the sovereignty of all states, our elections, and the rights of our citizens.”
The House of Representatives on Wednesday canceled scheduled votes for Thursday amid reports of potential security threats against the Capitol. Lawmakers are expected to vote late into the night.
More than 20 years ago, a group of former salesmen for Houston software entrepreneur Robert Brockman sued their old boss, claiming in court that he had deprived them of commissions by directing a portion of customer payments to a Cayman Islands entity.
Mr. Brockman twice appealed to the Texas Supreme Court as he tried to avoid answering detailed questions about the offshore entity, and he settled the case in 2001 under confidential terms.
Although the salesmen didn’t realize it at the time, they had stumbled onto early signs of what the government later called the largest criminal case ever brought against a person accused of evading U.S. taxes. Federal prosecutors in October charged Mr. Brockman with using a web of offshore entities to conceal about $2 billion in income from the Internal Revenue Service.
Mr. Brockman has pleaded not guilty to 39 criminal counts, including tax evasion, wire fraud, money laundering and evidence destruction. He and his attorneys didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Prosecutors allege the bulk of the tax evasion stemmed from profits Mr. Brockman made from investments with Vista Equity Partners, a private-equity firm he helped launch in 2000 and which now manages $73 billion in funds dedicated to software investments.
Vista founder Robert Smith, the wealthiest Black person in America, settled his own tax-evasion case with the government, which was made public on the day of Mr. Brockman’s indictment. Mr. Smith has agreed to testify against his former mentor, one of at least two Brockman confidants to turn on him.
Some of the money in the criminal case against Mr. Brockman originated with the same Cayman Islands entity that the salesmen complained about years earlier, according to an IRS affidavit unsealed in December. The link between the two cases hasn’t been previously reported.
Robert Brockman and Dorothy Brockman at a 2011 Rice University event in Houston.
The record-setting case pits Mr. Brockman, a billionaire with a reputation as a relentless litigant, against the immense resources of the federal government. Legal specialists say the government appears to have strong evidence, but federal prosecutors may face challenges trying the case because of the complexity of tax laws governing offshore trusts.
In another potential hurdle for the government, the 79-year-old Mr. Brockman claims in court documents he can’t be tried because he is suffering from dementia and is unable to assist in his own defense. Prosecutors said in court filings that he could be faking a mental decline. A hearing on his competency is scheduled for June, and if the court sides with Mr. Brockman, the charges could be dropped or deferred.
Despite his wealth, Mr. Brockman was virtually unknown outside of a small circle in Houston and the automotive industry until his indictment was announced in the fall.
Court documents and interviews with his former employees, business associates and his younger brother portray him as a brilliant, sometimes penny-pinching executive with an antigovernment streak that led him to regard the IRS as a corrupt organization unfairly targeting taxpayers.
Mr. Brockman bought used furniture for company offices, rarely gave raises and forbade employees from smoking to save money on health insurance, according to former employees and associates. He stayed at budget hotels and ate frozen dinners in his room during monthly visits to one of his company’s offices near Dayton, Ohio, a former vice president at his software firm recalled.
Most of the wealth he gathered over the years is held in a Bermuda trust that owns, among other things, nearly all of his software company. The firm, Reynolds & Reynolds Co., provides software to auto dealerships, and it had annual revenue of about $1.4 billion, according to a now-defunct Brockman charity website. Mr. Brockman was chief executive of Reynolds & Reynolds until the indictment.
“The allegations made by the Department of Justice focus on activities Robert Brockman engaged in outside of his professional responsibilities with Reynolds & Reynolds,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement. “Throughout numerous court filings and legal proceedings, the Company has never been alleged to have engaged in any wrongdoing in any way.”
The Bermuda trust has assets of at least $7.7 billion, including $1.4 billion in Swiss bank accounts, according to a confidential affidavit from Mr. Brockman’s wife that was filed with a Bermuda court and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A lawyer for a former trustee suggested in a recent Bermuda court hearing the trust’s total value could be as high as $10 billion.
That level of wealth would rank Mr. Brockman around 50th on the most recent Forbes 400 list of U.S. billionaires, well ahead of Twitter Inc. CEO Jack Dorsey and Fidelity Investments magnate Edward Johnson III. Mr. Brockman never appears on the list.
Among the assets Mr. Brockman has amassed: a Bombardier private jet, a 209-foot yacht, a 17,000-square-foot residence in Houston and a 5,800-square-foot cabin in Aspen, Colo., according to public records and court documents filed by prosecutors.
The Bombardier jet used by Robert Brockman.PHOTO: BRAD T
The origin of his fortune dates back five decades, when Mr. Brockman founded a company that became a pioneer in developing software that helps automobile dealers manage nearly every aspect of their businesses, including inventory, pricing, promotion and credit reports.
He was among the first software executives to see the value of recurring revenue, locking customers into long-term contracts for a product that was essential to conducting business and difficult to substitute, former executives and customers said.
Over the years, Reynolds & Reynolds has been in litigation with numerous car dealers, some of whom alleged they were overcharged for mandatory upgrades, court documents show. The company denied the allegations and often won the cases.
Reynolds & Reynolds and its main competitor, CDK Global Inc., are the subjects of an antitrust probe by the Federal Trade Commission, according to a CDK securities filing. Reynolds & Reynolds declined to comment about the antitrust probe or past litigation. CDK didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Self-made man
Mr. Brockman and his younger brother, Thomas David Brockman, were raised in St. Petersburg, Fla. Their father, Alfred Eugene Brockman, was a gas-station owner, and their mother, Pearl, a physiotherapist, according to 1940 census records.
Dave Brockman recalled lean years growing up and said his brother “decided he didn’t love that and went out to make something of himself.”
Robert Brockman attended Centre College, a selective liberal-arts college in Kentucky, and paid his way partly by delivering laundry, his brother said. He married at age 18, according to records in Boyle County, Ky., and later divorced.
Mr. Brockman graduated from the University of Florida and after working at Ford Motor Co. shifted to International Business Machines Corp. , where he became a top salesman. He married his current wife, Dorothy, in 1968.
An aerial view of Robert Brockman’s residence in Houston.PHOTO: PICTOMETRY
The couple lived in Houston, where Mr. Brockman began teaching himself computer programming and started his software company, initially known as Universal Computer Systems Inc.
In building UCS, Mr. Brockman was particular about new hires, requiring that all job applicants take a test designed to determine their intelligence and suitability for a given role. Vista’s own employee-testing regimen is based on that.
After being hired, staffers had to account for every call at the office, and executives each week posted the names of those who made the most personal calls. Employees had to use a keypad to open doors around the building so managers could trace their movements.
Mr. Brockman would lead executives on dove-hunting trips to a ranch in Mexico. He kept a stash of guns at the company’s Houston headquarters and in the trunks of the fleet of Mercedes sedans parked in the garage at his Houston home, former employees and visitors recall.
Robert Brockman and Dorothy Brockman during a Universal Computer Systems trip to Cancún in January 1995. The photo was included in an album distributed to employees who also attended.
Mr. Brockman’s yearlong sales training program was effective, former employees said. Alumni graduated to high-level sales roles at such companies as Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp.
He liked to keep employees on edge, recalled a former executive, Bobby Tyson, who said Mr. Brockman once asked him “when was the last time you shot somebody between the eyes.” The phrase, Mr. Tyson learned, meant to fire an employee at random. “Everybody understands they could be next,” he recalled his boss saying.
Mr. Tyson, who described Mr. Brockman as a genius whom he still admires, said he once reluctantly carried out such a firing on orders from his boss.
Later, Mr. Tyson sued Mr. Brockman for unpaid compensation. He prevailed after a six-year court battle, which ended after Mr. Brockman’s appeal was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Tyson said he ended up collecting about $2.5 million.
Mr. Brockman’s use of offshore entities started in 1981. That year, he and his late father flew to Bermuda to establish what became the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust, Dave Brockman said.
The trust has given away more than $100 million to charities since 2004, court records show. It also has six human beneficiaries, according to Bermuda court documents: Mr. Brockman, his wife, their son Robert Brockman II and a grandchild, along with Dave Brockman and his wife.
Dave Brockman, who once worked for UCS, said he hadn’t had much contact with his brother for close to 20 years. He said the two had a falling out after Robert denied him a promotion he felt he deserved, and he quit.
He doesn’t believe his brother did anything illegal, he said, but doesn’t want any money connected to a criminal case. If offered money from the trust, Dave Brockman said, “I would refuse it. It’s tainted money as far as I’m concerned.”
Money moves
The IRS was alerted more than 20 years ago to Mr. Brockman’s offshore activities as a result of the litigation by his former salesmen.
In court documents, the salesmen asserted Mr. Brockman founded the Cayman Islands entity not only to evade paying commissions but also to avoid federal taxes. Mr. Brockman denied the allegations and said he had sold the entity years before, while retaining preferred stock in it.
In the late 1990s, two attorneys for the salesmen met with an IRS agent, according to people familiar with the matter. The IRS around this time began an audit of Mr. Brockman and obtained records from Bermuda about the trust, according to a different person familiar with the matter.
The outcome of the inquiry couldn’t be determined. But when the Cayman Islands entity, Computer Terminals Ltd., was liquidated in the 1990s, “a substantial sum” made its way to a company in the Caribbean called Edge Capital Investments Ltd., according to the IRS affidavit. Edge Capital was controlled by Mr. Brockman outside of the Bermuda trust structure, prosecutors have alleged.
Mr. Brockman allegedly used $30 million from Edge Capital to acquire the Aspen property and a Colorado fishing retreat, part of the purported tax evasion scheme, according to the indictment.
He also allegedly used Edge Capital to secretly purchase a portion of his own company’s debt—an act prohibited by provisions in the loan agreements—at a sharp discount in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the indictment said. These allegations are potentially the most serious Mr. Brockman faces; each of the 20 wire-fraud counts related to the debt repurchase carries a maximum sentence of 30 years.
If Mr. Brockman’s case goes to trial, Mr. Smith, Vista’s chief executive, is expected to testify, marking a dramatic reversal in their lucrative relationship.
Robert Smith, chief executive of Vista Equity Partners, speaking during a 2018 conference in Beverly Hills, Calif.PHOTO: PATRICK T. FALLON/BLOOMBERG NEWS
The two men met in the late 1990s, when Mr. Brockman was considering selling his company and was introduced to Mr. Smith, then a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. technology banker.
After Mr. Brockman decided against the sale, he presented an idea to Mr. Smith: He would back the younger man in a private-equity fund devoted to software—a rarity at the time. Mr. Brockman agreed to make an initial pledge of $300 million, later increasing it to $1 billion, according to a statement of facts Mr. Smith signed in October as part of his deal with the government.
The arrangement carried one unusual condition. Mr. Smith had to put a portion of his share of the fund profits into an offshore structure similar to Mr. Brockman’s. Mr. Brockman said he didn’t want his own foreign trust to be dragged into a U.S. court in the event of litigation against Vista, the statement of facts said.
Robert Brockman during the Universal Computer Systems trip to Cancún in January 1995, in a photo from an album distributed to employees who attended.
Mr. Brockman was the only investor in Vista’s first fund, and became a major investor in a couple of subsequent funds. Many elements of Vista’s playbook for maximizing profits at software companies followed Mr. Brockman’s model, according to people familiar with Vista’s early years.
In 2006, Vista helped Mr. Brockman’s Universal Computer Systems finance the $2.8 billion acquisition of much larger Reynolds & Reynolds, putting Mr. Brockman atop one of the two dominant players in the auto-dealer software business.
Mr. Smith, 20 years younger than Mr. Brockman, became as high-profile as Mr. Brockman was publicity-shy. In 2019, Mr. Smith pledged to pay off the student loans held by the graduating class of Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta. He owns one of Manhattan’s most expensive properties—bought for nearly $60 million in 2018—and is chairman of Carnegie Hall. He divorced his wife and married the 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Year.
Messrs. Smith and Brockman were both targets of the government’s tax probe. But in October, Mr. Smith reached a nonprosecution agreement with the government that included Mr. Smith’s admission that he evaded paying taxes on more than $200 million in income, using an offshore arrangement similar to one allegedly used by Mr. Brockman.
Mr. Smith agreed to pay $139 million in back taxes and penalties and cooperate against Mr. Brockman, the government said.
Hidden records
Prosecutors allege Mr. Brockman set up an encrypted email system to communicate with those involved in his offshore structure. They referred to each other using such fishing-related code names such as “Permit,” for Mr. Brockman, and “Steelhead,” for Mr. Smith, according to the indictment; the IRS was “The House.”
Around 2007, Mr. Brockman hired a Bermuda attorney, Evatt Tamine, to help manage the offshore structure. Mr. Tamine became Mr. Brockman’s right-hand man and acted as the trustee of the main Brockman trust. Prosecutors, citing dozens of examples, allege in the indictment that Mr. Tamine was only a figurehead, and Mr. Brockman secretly directed every move.
A trust set up by a U.S. taxpayer’s forebears—as with the Brockman trust—may not be subject to tax as long as it is run independently and no money flows to the taxpayer, according to tax specialists. By claiming that Mr. Brockman was secretly running the trust, prosecutors may be building a case that it was either a sham or a type of controlled trust that is taxable to him, said Matthew McKim, an offshore-tax lawyer at Loeb & Loeb LLP.
In one of Mr. Tamine’s early performance reviews, included in a court filing, Mr. Brockman instructed him to keep records on “an encrypted USB dongle carried in a different location in luggage when traveling” and to run a software program called “Evidence Eliminator.”
The yacht used by Robert Brockman, in Gibraltar.PHOTO: GIBFRAN46
Mr. Brockman learned of the tax investigation in June 2016, according to prosecutors. Soon after, a former UCS executive involved in the offshore structure, Don Jones, died. Mr. Tamine made several trips to the home of Mr. Jones’s widow in Mississippi to destroy documents and computer drives, according to Mr. Tamine’s account in one of his performance reviews filed with the court.
“Those efforts meant that we could rest easily that any attempt to search Don’s home would be fruitless,” Mr. Tamine reported to his boss, according to the court filing.
Bermuda authorities instead raided Mr. Tamine’s home at the request of the U.S. in September 2018. He agreed to cooperate in the case against Mr. Brockman and gave authorities access to the encrypted email server.
Prosecutors allege that Mr. Brockman began seeking medical evaluations of his mental acuity shortly after the raid.
A doctor in March 2019 said the executive was operating intellectually with an IQ of 87 and exhibited poor short-term recall, according to one of the medical reports submitted in court by Mr. Brockman’s attorneys.
Prosecutors say Mr. Brockman’s doctors have an apparent conflict of interest because they are affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine. The Brockman trust has donated millions of dollars to the school, and Mr. Brockman has served as a board trustee. A Baylor spokeswoman declined to comment.
Mr. Brockman continued to run his multibillion-dollar software company during this period, and he gave “long and cogent answers” during a two-day legal deposition in September 2019, prosecutors said.
Two weeks later, Mr. Brockman took a cognitive test in which he had trouble drawing a clock face, according to court filings, resulting in a finding of “moderate dementia.”
