House Republicans strike deal on motion to vacate, making it harder to oust speaker

(PHILADELPHIA) — A Philadelphia judge is allowing Elon Musk’s America PAC to continue its million-dollar giveaway to registered swing state voters.

Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta denied Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s request for an injunction to stop the giveaway, which has handed out $17 million to voters across the swing states. According to defense attorneys, America PAC plans to announce their 18th and final prize winner on Tuesday in Michigan.

The decision followed a nearly six-hour hearing Monday, during which an attorney for Musk and America PAC revealed that the winners were preselected despite Musk saying publicly it was a “random” lottery.

A lawyer for Krasner called Musk’s giveaway “one of the great scams of the last 50 years” by deceiving more than a million swing state voters to sign a petition in the hopes of winning a million dollars.

“There is nothing random about that process,” the lawyer, John Summers, said. “This was a profound, devastating and widespread deception.”

Summers argued that Musk attempted to “influence the election” by encouraging hundreds of thousands of voters to sign a petition while preselecting the winners based on their “suitability” to serve as spokespeople for the political action committee. Summers argued that even if the lottery was not random, it’s still illegal under Pennsylvania law.

“They essentially advertised this as a lottery. It’s not a defense that what we said it was isn’t true,” Summers said.

Andy Taylor, a lawyer for Musk’s America PAC, argued that the DA’s case falls apart after today’s revelation that the alleged lottery awarded preselected winners.

“It’s an opportunity to earn. It’s not a chance to win,” Taylor said, emphasizing the winners’ roles as spokespeople for the PAC.

Taylor emphasized that the case centers on a petition in support of the First and Second amendments, arguing that shutting down the giveaway would infringe on free speech.

“You are going to smother in the crib the rights of millions of Pennsylvanians from exercising constitutional magnitude free speech,” Taylor said.

Speaking outside court, Krasner’s attorney declined to comment on the specifics of the case, simply acknowledging, “It’s in the hands of the judge.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(GEORGIA) — With early voting underway in the key battleground state of Georgia, a top election official in the state forcefully pushed back Wednesday on false claims of voting machine fraud — a debunked conspiracy theory that proliferated after the 2020 presidential election and has now been revived by some prominent Republican figures.

“[There is] zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual’s vote,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top official on the Georgia secretary of state’s office. “That claim was a lie in 2020 and it’s a lie now.”

Sterling, in his comments, called out “certain congresspeople” — appearing to reference Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently pushed an unsubstantiated allegation that a Georgia resident’s early vote had been switched by a voting machine.

Greene, in an interview and social media post, shared an unidentified Whitfield County voter’s claim that a voting machine had printed their ballot with a different selection than the one they had made on the machine — a claim that local officials said was simply a case of human error.

“Humans make mistakes. They’re called mistakes for a reason,” Sterling wrote in a post on X. “This issue is human/user error, always will be. Whitfield Co. handled it & voter voted.”

In her tweet about the alleged incident, Greene told her followers to “please double check your printed ballot” before turning it in, and noted that “we vote on Dominion voting machines” — a reference to the voting machine company that was the target of numerous false conspiracy theories in 2020.

Greene pushed the same claims in an interview last week with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, according to a clip posted online, claiming the machine “kept on switching the votes” of that voter.

“It sounds similar to what we heard in 2020,” Greene said of the incident, which occurred in her district, again noting Georgia’s use of Dominion machines.

X owner Elon Musk — who, like Greene, is a supporter of former President Donald Trump — made similar conspiracy theory claims while speaking at a town hall in Pennsylvania last week.

Dominion, in the wake of the 2020 election, filed a series of defamation lawsuits after it became the center of a false conspiracy theory that voting machines had rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden. Last year the company settled its landmark defamation suit against Fox News for a $787 million. The other suits are still ongoing.

In a statement, Dominion pushed back on Greene’s new claim.

“The false claim that voting machines can switch votes has been repeatedly debunked,” a Dominion spokesperson said. “As both state and local election authorities have confirmed, the issue in Whitfield County was due to voter error. The county provided the voter with an opportunity to mark and print a new ballot with their correct choices and the issue was quickly resolved.”

In a press release, the Whitfield County Board of Elections said there was no issue with the voting machine, and that this was “the only incident among over 6,000 ballots cast.”

“If we had reason to suspect that the machine was in error, we would have immediately taken the machine out of service,” the statement said. “No machines have been taken out of service.”

The statement noted that Georgia law allows voters to void their printed ballot “if they make the wrong selection on the ballot marking device.”

Greene, responding to a separate Facebook post by the election board, thanked the poll workers for “resolving the issues” and defended their work, writing that it is “not their fault.”

“They don’t make the Georgia state election laws and they are just doing their jobs,” Greene said of the poll workers.

Speaking at the press conference on Wednesday, Sterling said the “main situation” they have encountered includes “elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly and they didn’t review their ballot properly before they printed it.”

“Anyone claiming machines are flipping votes are lying or don’t research,” Sterling wrote in a post on X last week.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — House Republicans had mixed reactions to President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of Health and Human Services in his administration.

Kennedy has been an anti-vaccine activist and founded the Children’s Health Defense, a prominent anti-vaccine nonprofit that has campaigned against immunizations and other public health measures like water fluoridation. Medical experts expressed concerns about a rise in medical misinformation through Kennedy’s candidacy.

HHS oversees major health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, among others.

Rep. John Duarte, R-Calif., raised concerns about the pick, saying, “Well, all my kids are vaccinated and I hope he’s not going to move against one of the most life-saving technologies in the history of the world.”

Asked if Kennedy was the right choice, Duarte responded, “I don’t know.”

“I’d like to see more of his opinions and more of his thoughts in different matters, but the anti-vaccine mantra scares me a lot,” he said.

There was no immediate reaction from senators, who would vote on Kennedy’s nomination.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise didn’t clearly answer a question about his reaction to the selection of Kennedy, noting only that Trump was moving “fast” with his nominations.

“Clearly President Trump is moving fast to get as many people appointed as possible. It shows he’s carried through on the mandate the voters just gave him. To lay out his cabinet. To get to work,” Scalise said.

Scalise evaded a question about his position on the vaccine misinformation that Kennedy has espoused: “Ultimately, President Trump’s agenda….” Scalise pivoted.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, laughed when asked for an opinion, saying “It’s the president’s prerogative. I am not a senator.”

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, called the news “fantastic.”

“Robert’s a friend now for a few years, we’ve been talking a lot,” Roy said.

Roy said there’s a need to be “disrupting the corruption” in federal health agencies, which he expects Kennedy to accomplish.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., celebrated the news: “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited.”

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., called Kennedy’s selection a “great pick.”

“Good pick on the president’s part, as all of them have been, and he’ll do a good job,” Norman said. “People say, ‘Well, he’s a Democrat.’ Look, he’s got an interest, he’s got an interest, a passion for the medical field. He’ll do a good job in it.”

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-SD, took a more moderate position on the selection of Kennedy.

“I don’t mind disrupting. I mean, clearly, I think sometimes these big agencies get into some group think and I think it’s perfectly healthy to have some conventional wisdom challenged. Clearly, the Senate’s going to want to understand what is his vision for the agency,” Johnson said, adding that he wants to understand more about where Kennedy’s “scientific background is.”

Asked if he trusted Kennedy on public health, Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. said “absolutely,” adding that “I think we need to broaden our horizons a little bit.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.