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Friday, August 16, 2013
Your Mortgage Documents Are Fake!
Prepare to be outraged. Newly obtained filings from this Florida woman's lawsuit uncover horrifying scheme (Update)
By David Dayen
If you know about foreclosure fraud, the mass fabrication of mortgage
documents in state courts by banks attempting to foreclose on
homeowners, you may have one nagging question: Why did banks have to
resort to this illegal scheme? Was it just cheaper to mock up the
documents than to provide the real ones? Did banks figure they simply
had enough power over regulators, politicians and the courts to get away
with it? (They were probably right about that one.)
A newly unsealed lawsuit, which banks settled in 2012 for $95 million, actually offers a different reason, providing a key answer to one of the persistent riddles of the financial crisis and its aftermath. The lawsuit states that banks resorted to fake documents because they could not legally establish true ownership of the loans when trying to foreclose.
This reality, which banks did not contest but instead settled out of court, means that tens of millions of mortgages in America still lack a legitimate chain of ownership, with implications far into the future. And if Congress, supported by the Obama administration, goes back to the same housing finance system, with the same corrupt private entities who broke the nation’s private property system back in business packaging mortgages, then shame on all of us.
The 2011 lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in both North and South Carolina, by a white-collar fraud specialist named Lynn Szymoniak, on behalf of the federal government, 17 states and three cities. Twenty-eight banks, mortgage servicers and document processing companies are named in the lawsuit, including mega-banks like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America.
Szymoniak, who fell into foreclosure herself in 2009, researched her own mortgage documents and found massive fraud (for example, one document claimed that Deutsche Bank, listed as the owner of her mortgage, acquired ownership in October 2008, four months after they first filed for foreclosure). She eventually examined tens of thousands of documents, enough to piece together the entire scheme.
A mortgage has two parts: the promissory note (the IOU from the borrower to the lender) and the mortgage, which creates the lien on the home in case of default. During the housing bubble, banks bought loans from originators, and then (in a process known as securitization) enacted a series of transactions that would eventually pool thousands of mortgages into bonds, sold all over the world to public pension funds, state and municipal governments and other investors. A trustee would pool the loans and sell the securities to investors, and the investors would get an annual percentage yield on their money.
In order for the securitization to work, banks purchasing the mortgages had to physically convey the promissory note and the mortgage into the trust. The note had to be endorsed (the way an individual would endorse a check), and handed over to a document custodian for the trust, with a “mortgage assignment” confirming the transfer of ownership. And this had to be done before a 90-day cutoff date, with no grace period beyond that.
Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin spelled this out in testimony before Congress in 2010: “If mortgages were not properly transferred in the securitization process, then mortgage-backed securities would in fact not be backed by any mortgages whatsoever.”
The lawsuit alleges that these notes, as well as the mortgage assignments, were “never delivered to the mortgage-backed securities trusts,” and that the trustees lied to the SEC and investors about this. As a result, the trusts could not establish ownership of the loan when they went to foreclose, forcing the production of a stream of false documents, signed by “robo-signers,” employees using a bevy of corporate titles for companies that never employed them, to sign documents about which they had little or no knowledge.
Many documents were forged (the suit provides evidence of the signature of one robo-signer, Linda Green, written eight different ways), some were signed by “officers” of companies that went bankrupt years earlier, and dozens of assignments listed as the owner of the loan “Bogus Assignee for Intervening Assignments,” clearly a template that was never changed. One defendant in the case, Lender Processing Services, created masses of false documents on behalf of the banks, often using fake corporate officer titles and forged signatures. This was all done to establish standing to foreclose in courts, which the banks otherwise could not.
Szymoniak stated in her lawsuit that, “Defendants used fraudulent mortgage assignments to conceal that over 1400 MBS trusts, each with mortgages valued at over $1 billion, are missing critical documents,” meaning that at least $1.4 trillion in mortgage-backed securities are, in fact, non-mortgage-backed securities. Because of the strict laws governing of these kinds of securitizations, there’s no way to make the assignments after the fact. Activists have a name for this: “securitization FAIL.”
One smoking gun piece of evidence in the lawsuit concerns a mortgage assignment dated Feb. 9, 2009, after the foreclosure of the mortgage in question was completed. According to the suit, “A typewritten note on the right hand side of the document states: ‘This Assignment of Mortgage was inadvertently not recorded prior to the Final Judgment of Foreclosure… but is now being recorded to clear title.’”
This admission confirms that the mortgage assignment was not made before the closing date of the trust, invalidating ownership. The suit further argued that “the act of fabricating the assignments is evidence that the MBS Trust did not own the notes and/or the mortgage liens for some assets claimed to be in the pool.”
The federal government, states and cities joined the lawsuit under 25 counts of the federal False Claims Act and state-based versions of the law. All of them bought mortgage-backed securities from banks that never conveyed the mortgages or notes to the trusts. The plaintiffs argued that, considering that trustees and servicers had to spend lots of money forging and fabricating documents to establish ownership, they were materially harmed by the subsequent impaired value of the securities. Also, these investors (which includes the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve) paid for the transfer of mortgages to the trusts, yet they were never actually transferred.
Finally, the lawsuit argues that the federal government was harmed by “payments made on mortgage guarantees to Defendants lacking valid notes and assignments of mortgages who were not entitled to demand or receive said payments.”
Despite Szymoniak seeking a trial by jury, the government intervened in the case, and settled part of it at the beginning of 2012, extracting $95 million from the five biggest banks in the suit (Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citi and GMAC/Ally Bank). Szymoniak herself was awarded $18 million. But the underlying evidence was never revealed until the case was unsealed last Thursday.
Now that it’s unsealed, Szymoniak, as the named plaintiff, can go forward and prove the case. Along with her legal team (which includes the law firm of Grant & Eisenhoffer, which has recovered more money under the False Claims Act than any firm in the country), Szymoniak can pursue discovery and go to trial against the rest of the named defendants, including HSBC, the Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank and US Bank.
The expenses of the case, previously borne by the government, now are borne by Szymoniak and her team, but the percentages of recovery funds are also higher. “I’m really glad I was part of collecting this money for the government, and I’m looking forward to going through discovery and collecting the rest of it,” Szymoniak told Salon.
It’s good that the case remains active, because the $95 million settlement was a pittance compared to the enormity of the crime. By the end of 2009, private mortgage-backed securities trusts held one-third of all residential mortgages in the U.S. That means that tens of millions of home mortgages worth trillions of dollars have no legitimate underlying owner that can establish the right to foreclose. This hasn’t stopped banks from foreclosing anyway with false documents, and they are often successful, a testament to the breakdown of law in the judicial system. But to this day, the resulting chaos in disentangling ownership harms homeowners trying to sell these properties, as well as those trying to purchase them. And it renders some properties impossible to sell.
To this day, banks foreclose on borrowers using fraudulent mortgage assignments, a legacy of failing to prosecute this conduct and instead letting banks pay a fine to settle it. This disappoints Szymoniak, who told Salon the owner of these loans is now essentially “whoever lies the most convincingly and whoever gets the benefit of doubt from the judge.” Szymoniak used her share of the settlement to start the Housing Justice Foundation, a non-profit that attempts to raise awareness of the continuing corruption of the nation’s courts and land title system.
Most of official Washington, including President Obama, wants to wind down mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and return to a system where private lenders create securitization trusts, packaging pools of loans and selling them to investors. Government would provide a limited guarantee to investors against catastrophic losses, but the private banks would make the securities, to generate more capital for home loans and expand homeownership.
That’s despite the evidence we now have that, the last time banks tried this, they ignored the law, failed to convey the mortgages and notes to the trusts, and ripped off investors trying to cover their tracks, to say nothing of how they violated the due process rights of homeowners and stole their homes with fake documents.
The very same banks that created this criminal enterprise and legal quagmire would be in control again. Why should we view this in any way as a sound public policy, instead of a ticking time bomb that could once again throw the private property system, a bulwark of capitalism and indeed civilization itself, into utter disarray? As Lynn Szymoniak puts it, “The President’s calling for private equity to return. Why would we return to this?”
Update: This story previously suggested that banks settled this lawsuit with the federal government for $1 billion. That number is actually the total for a number of whistle-blower lawsuits that were folded into a larger National Mortgage Settlement. This specific lawsuit settled for $95 million. The post above has been changed to reflect this fact.
A newly unsealed lawsuit, which banks settled in 2012 for $95 million, actually offers a different reason, providing a key answer to one of the persistent riddles of the financial crisis and its aftermath. The lawsuit states that banks resorted to fake documents because they could not legally establish true ownership of the loans when trying to foreclose.
This reality, which banks did not contest but instead settled out of court, means that tens of millions of mortgages in America still lack a legitimate chain of ownership, with implications far into the future. And if Congress, supported by the Obama administration, goes back to the same housing finance system, with the same corrupt private entities who broke the nation’s private property system back in business packaging mortgages, then shame on all of us.
The 2011 lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in both North and South Carolina, by a white-collar fraud specialist named Lynn Szymoniak, on behalf of the federal government, 17 states and three cities. Twenty-eight banks, mortgage servicers and document processing companies are named in the lawsuit, including mega-banks like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America.
Szymoniak, who fell into foreclosure herself in 2009, researched her own mortgage documents and found massive fraud (for example, one document claimed that Deutsche Bank, listed as the owner of her mortgage, acquired ownership in October 2008, four months after they first filed for foreclosure). She eventually examined tens of thousands of documents, enough to piece together the entire scheme.
A mortgage has two parts: the promissory note (the IOU from the borrower to the lender) and the mortgage, which creates the lien on the home in case of default. During the housing bubble, banks bought loans from originators, and then (in a process known as securitization) enacted a series of transactions that would eventually pool thousands of mortgages into bonds, sold all over the world to public pension funds, state and municipal governments and other investors. A trustee would pool the loans and sell the securities to investors, and the investors would get an annual percentage yield on their money.
In order for the securitization to work, banks purchasing the mortgages had to physically convey the promissory note and the mortgage into the trust. The note had to be endorsed (the way an individual would endorse a check), and handed over to a document custodian for the trust, with a “mortgage assignment” confirming the transfer of ownership. And this had to be done before a 90-day cutoff date, with no grace period beyond that.
Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin spelled this out in testimony before Congress in 2010: “If mortgages were not properly transferred in the securitization process, then mortgage-backed securities would in fact not be backed by any mortgages whatsoever.”
The lawsuit alleges that these notes, as well as the mortgage assignments, were “never delivered to the mortgage-backed securities trusts,” and that the trustees lied to the SEC and investors about this. As a result, the trusts could not establish ownership of the loan when they went to foreclose, forcing the production of a stream of false documents, signed by “robo-signers,” employees using a bevy of corporate titles for companies that never employed them, to sign documents about which they had little or no knowledge.
Many documents were forged (the suit provides evidence of the signature of one robo-signer, Linda Green, written eight different ways), some were signed by “officers” of companies that went bankrupt years earlier, and dozens of assignments listed as the owner of the loan “Bogus Assignee for Intervening Assignments,” clearly a template that was never changed. One defendant in the case, Lender Processing Services, created masses of false documents on behalf of the banks, often using fake corporate officer titles and forged signatures. This was all done to establish standing to foreclose in courts, which the banks otherwise could not.
Szymoniak stated in her lawsuit that, “Defendants used fraudulent mortgage assignments to conceal that over 1400 MBS trusts, each with mortgages valued at over $1 billion, are missing critical documents,” meaning that at least $1.4 trillion in mortgage-backed securities are, in fact, non-mortgage-backed securities. Because of the strict laws governing of these kinds of securitizations, there’s no way to make the assignments after the fact. Activists have a name for this: “securitization FAIL.”
One smoking gun piece of evidence in the lawsuit concerns a mortgage assignment dated Feb. 9, 2009, after the foreclosure of the mortgage in question was completed. According to the suit, “A typewritten note on the right hand side of the document states: ‘This Assignment of Mortgage was inadvertently not recorded prior to the Final Judgment of Foreclosure… but is now being recorded to clear title.’”
This admission confirms that the mortgage assignment was not made before the closing date of the trust, invalidating ownership. The suit further argued that “the act of fabricating the assignments is evidence that the MBS Trust did not own the notes and/or the mortgage liens for some assets claimed to be in the pool.”
The federal government, states and cities joined the lawsuit under 25 counts of the federal False Claims Act and state-based versions of the law. All of them bought mortgage-backed securities from banks that never conveyed the mortgages or notes to the trusts. The plaintiffs argued that, considering that trustees and servicers had to spend lots of money forging and fabricating documents to establish ownership, they were materially harmed by the subsequent impaired value of the securities. Also, these investors (which includes the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve) paid for the transfer of mortgages to the trusts, yet they were never actually transferred.
Finally, the lawsuit argues that the federal government was harmed by “payments made on mortgage guarantees to Defendants lacking valid notes and assignments of mortgages who were not entitled to demand or receive said payments.”
Despite Szymoniak seeking a trial by jury, the government intervened in the case, and settled part of it at the beginning of 2012, extracting $95 million from the five biggest banks in the suit (Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citi and GMAC/Ally Bank). Szymoniak herself was awarded $18 million. But the underlying evidence was never revealed until the case was unsealed last Thursday.
Now that it’s unsealed, Szymoniak, as the named plaintiff, can go forward and prove the case. Along with her legal team (which includes the law firm of Grant & Eisenhoffer, which has recovered more money under the False Claims Act than any firm in the country), Szymoniak can pursue discovery and go to trial against the rest of the named defendants, including HSBC, the Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank and US Bank.
The expenses of the case, previously borne by the government, now are borne by Szymoniak and her team, but the percentages of recovery funds are also higher. “I’m really glad I was part of collecting this money for the government, and I’m looking forward to going through discovery and collecting the rest of it,” Szymoniak told Salon.
It’s good that the case remains active, because the $95 million settlement was a pittance compared to the enormity of the crime. By the end of 2009, private mortgage-backed securities trusts held one-third of all residential mortgages in the U.S. That means that tens of millions of home mortgages worth trillions of dollars have no legitimate underlying owner that can establish the right to foreclose. This hasn’t stopped banks from foreclosing anyway with false documents, and they are often successful, a testament to the breakdown of law in the judicial system. But to this day, the resulting chaos in disentangling ownership harms homeowners trying to sell these properties, as well as those trying to purchase them. And it renders some properties impossible to sell.
To this day, banks foreclose on borrowers using fraudulent mortgage assignments, a legacy of failing to prosecute this conduct and instead letting banks pay a fine to settle it. This disappoints Szymoniak, who told Salon the owner of these loans is now essentially “whoever lies the most convincingly and whoever gets the benefit of doubt from the judge.” Szymoniak used her share of the settlement to start the Housing Justice Foundation, a non-profit that attempts to raise awareness of the continuing corruption of the nation’s courts and land title system.
Most of official Washington, including President Obama, wants to wind down mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and return to a system where private lenders create securitization trusts, packaging pools of loans and selling them to investors. Government would provide a limited guarantee to investors against catastrophic losses, but the private banks would make the securities, to generate more capital for home loans and expand homeownership.
That’s despite the evidence we now have that, the last time banks tried this, they ignored the law, failed to convey the mortgages and notes to the trusts, and ripped off investors trying to cover their tracks, to say nothing of how they violated the due process rights of homeowners and stole their homes with fake documents.
The very same banks that created this criminal enterprise and legal quagmire would be in control again. Why should we view this in any way as a sound public policy, instead of a ticking time bomb that could once again throw the private property system, a bulwark of capitalism and indeed civilization itself, into utter disarray? As Lynn Szymoniak puts it, “The President’s calling for private equity to return. Why would we return to this?”
Update: This story previously suggested that banks settled this lawsuit with the federal government for $1 billion. That number is actually the total for a number of whistle-blower lawsuits that were folded into a larger National Mortgage Settlement. This specific lawsuit settled for $95 million. The post above has been changed to reflect this fact.
David Dayen is a contributing writer for Salon. Follow him on Twitter at @ddayen.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
The Greatest Phony America's Ever Known
by Ted Nugent
It is very difficult to ignore accusations of phoniness from
the master of all things phony who has dedicated his entire life to one
phony scam after another. But when this unprecedented level of criminal
abuse of power is so flagrantly dictated from the most powerful man in
the world, good Americans should be quivering in our boots.
No, Mr. President, those are not phony tears from Brian Terry’s mother. Those are real tears, unlike your constant phony blather about caring about the middle class as you continue your well-orchestrated kamikaze economic swan dive for the average American family.
And, be assured, you old Chicago ACORN scammaster you, that those
were not phony body bags that arrived home from Benghazi. As the
greatest phony America has ever known, like your phoniest phony “job” as
community organizer, your phony claims to get to the bottom of that
horrific dereliction of duty by your phony secretary of state was just
another scam of phony smoke and mirrors to placate your phony sheep-like
constituency.
Phony is as phony does, Mr. President, but none of the tea party or conservative Republicans’ claims of illegal targeting by your phony IRS jackboots is phony by any stretch of the imagination.
We believe your earlier claims that such accusations were serious was just more of your phony baloney.
You want phony, Mr. President? I give you your top cop of the United States, your own phony attorney general who refuses to charge your Black Panther buddies with any crimes even though you both saw the same footage of your phony buddies committing numerous federal and state felonies when they threatened and intimidated voters in Philadelphia.
Nothing phony about those criminal gangsters.
And with all due respect, your holy phoniness, who can’t see the terminal phoniness of wasting more tax dollars with more phony charges against George Zimmerman in defiance of your own FBI investigation and the same exhaustive evidence that proved his obvious innocence to the jury of his peers and everyone paying attention who was not blinded by your phony racism?
And we mustn’t forget your phony Nobel Peace Prize, or your phony real estate scammaster ripoff artist Tony Rezko, or your phony claims that your phony “Affordable Healthcare” scam will make our healthcare system cheaper and better when just the opposite is guaranteed.
And let’s all be honest here; more of us believe in the American hero Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s thorough investigation into your phony birth certificate and phony history than the phony media’s smoke and mirrors.
We all know that Van Jones is a phony and all your green scams are as phony as phony can be.
We know that your Mao-loving communications czar Anita Dunn is as phony as they come.
Everyone knows your phony claims to “all of the above” for America’s energy independence is dangerously phony.
We know your so-called Department of Justice is as phony as the insane phony claim that your Allah Ahkbar buddy Maj. Hasan is about as guilty of “workplace” violence as I am the tooth fairy.
I could go on and on and on, but in order to avoid the inevitable violent vomiting impetus from more of your nasty phony baloney than America can possibly handle, I would just like to say: “How dare you, Mr. President, claim the nonstop ugly scandals during your Saul Alinsky inspired attack on America are phony, when everyone with a brain, a heart and a soul knows damn well what you are up to and how you are intentionally implementing the ‘Rules for Radicals’ agenda so appropriately dedicated to Satan.”
We know your hope-and-change lie is as phony as it comes. We know the rotten America-hating preacher that married you and baptized your children is a phony man of the cloth, a soiled cloth as it were.
It brings me no pleasure at all to have to admit all this ugliness. But as a participating “We the People” American in this sacred experiment in self-government, it is clearly my duty, a moral obligation that I owe to the hero warriors of the U.S. military and their families for sacrificing so dearly for our God-given individual rights, as guaranteed by the sacred U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
They, and I as a law enforcement officer, took a sacred oath of honor, to defend, protect and enforce the U.S. Constitution. But unlike the president of the United States, we weren’t being phony when we raised our hand and placed our hands on the Holy Bible, and gave our solemn pledge as Americans.
We meant it.
No, these are not phony scandals, but we are heartbroken that we have a phony president.
No, Mr. President, those are not phony tears from Brian Terry’s mother. Those are real tears, unlike your constant phony blather about caring about the middle class as you continue your well-orchestrated kamikaze economic swan dive for the average American family.
Phony is as phony does, Mr. President, but none of the tea party or conservative Republicans’ claims of illegal targeting by your phony IRS jackboots is phony by any stretch of the imagination.
We believe your earlier claims that such accusations were serious was just more of your phony baloney.
You want phony, Mr. President? I give you your top cop of the United States, your own phony attorney general who refuses to charge your Black Panther buddies with any crimes even though you both saw the same footage of your phony buddies committing numerous federal and state felonies when they threatened and intimidated voters in Philadelphia.
Nothing phony about those criminal gangsters.
And with all due respect, your holy phoniness, who can’t see the terminal phoniness of wasting more tax dollars with more phony charges against George Zimmerman in defiance of your own FBI investigation and the same exhaustive evidence that proved his obvious innocence to the jury of his peers and everyone paying attention who was not blinded by your phony racism?
And we mustn’t forget your phony Nobel Peace Prize, or your phony real estate scammaster ripoff artist Tony Rezko, or your phony claims that your phony “Affordable Healthcare” scam will make our healthcare system cheaper and better when just the opposite is guaranteed.
And let’s all be honest here; more of us believe in the American hero Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s thorough investigation into your phony birth certificate and phony history than the phony media’s smoke and mirrors.
We all know that Van Jones is a phony and all your green scams are as phony as phony can be.
We know that your Mao-loving communications czar Anita Dunn is as phony as they come.
Everyone knows your phony claims to “all of the above” for America’s energy independence is dangerously phony.
We know your so-called Department of Justice is as phony as the insane phony claim that your Allah Ahkbar buddy Maj. Hasan is about as guilty of “workplace” violence as I am the tooth fairy.
I could go on and on and on, but in order to avoid the inevitable violent vomiting impetus from more of your nasty phony baloney than America can possibly handle, I would just like to say: “How dare you, Mr. President, claim the nonstop ugly scandals during your Saul Alinsky inspired attack on America are phony, when everyone with a brain, a heart and a soul knows damn well what you are up to and how you are intentionally implementing the ‘Rules for Radicals’ agenda so appropriately dedicated to Satan.”
We know your hope-and-change lie is as phony as it comes. We know the rotten America-hating preacher that married you and baptized your children is a phony man of the cloth, a soiled cloth as it were.
It brings me no pleasure at all to have to admit all this ugliness. But as a participating “We the People” American in this sacred experiment in self-government, it is clearly my duty, a moral obligation that I owe to the hero warriors of the U.S. military and their families for sacrificing so dearly for our God-given individual rights, as guaranteed by the sacred U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
They, and I as a law enforcement officer, took a sacred oath of honor, to defend, protect and enforce the U.S. Constitution. But unlike the president of the United States, we weren’t being phony when we raised our hand and placed our hands on the Holy Bible, and gave our solemn pledge as Americans.
We meant it.
No, these are not phony scandals, but we are heartbroken that we have a phony president.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Did Obama break law to win re-election?
Former Homeland Security attorney exposes shrewd maneuver
This is the question posed by former Homeland Security attorney Stewart Baker, a blogger for The Volokh Conspiracy, a group blog organized by Eugene Volokh, a professor of American law at the UCLA School of Law.
Baker’s credentials make the question a serious one.
A partner in the Washington office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, he returned to private law practice after serving for three and a half years as the assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, where he created and managed the 250-person DHS Policy Directorate responsible, among other duties, for relationships with law enforcement and public advisory committees.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, enacted by Congress in 1986, is a broadly written law that in practice regulates virtually all computers and cellphones, largely because communications over the Internet tends to have implications for interstate commerce.
Baker argued that the Obama presidential campaign in 2012 possibly violated the act by an arrangement with Obama supporters posting on Facebook. It allowed the Obama campaign to search the person’s Facebook network for likely voters the campaign could identify as unmotivated or unregistered.
The likely voters would then get tailored messages from their Facebook friends urging them to register and turn out.
Baker’s appreciation for the creativity of the tactic was moderated by his conclusion the tactic might have been a criminal violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
“It’s clever. It’s the future,” Baker conceded. “And it’s a violation of the CFAA. Facebook doesn’t let users share access to their accounts, and anything Facebook doesn’t authorize is very likely a federal crime.”
Baker explained that Facebook’s customer service agreement was written to limit access to information, not just use of the information.
“Maybe the campaign never thought about the possibility that it was violating federal law,” Baker wrote. “That’s not a scandal, though it strikes me as unlikely that not one of these tech-savvy geeks failed to notice that they were breaching Facebook’s terms of service.”
Given the importance of turnout to the outcome of the 2012 presidential campaign, Baker argued President Obama arguably won re-election by violating federal law or by getting special treatment from Facebook, and maybe from federal prosecutors as well.
“I think this issue will go mainstream,” Baker insisted. “Half the country will want to know exactly how that happened. And I don’t see how the extraordinary discussion conferred by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act can survive the storm that follows.”
Trolling for voters
WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi, author of the WND book “What Went Wrong: The Inside Story of the GOP Debacle of 2012 … And How It Can Be Avoided Next Time,” agrees.
“There is no doubt the Obama computer strategies and capabilities gave Obama an advantage in 2012,” Corsi said. “A major goal of the Obama voter intelligence campaign was to network from strong Obama supporters to find likely Obama voters that could be converted into Election Day votes.”
Corsi pointed out that despite Obama winning six of the seven swing states in play in 2012, many of the key states were very close, within reach for Romney had Republican turnout been higher.
In 2012, when all the precincts were counted, Obama won Ohio by only 103,481 votes, approximately 2 percent of all votes cast in the state, and he won Florida by 73,189 votes, approximately 1 percent of all the votes cast.
“Turnout was the key to victory in 2012,” Corsi pointed out. “Approximately 6.7 million fewer white voters voted in 2012 than voted in 2008. Romney got 59 percent of the white vote. The white voters who stayed home were the conservatives. Had Romney gotten the same numbers of white voters to the polls as McCain got in 2008, Romney could well have been president.”
Maximizing turnout in the Democratic Party base was a necessary strategy for Obama to be re-elected, Corsi pointed out, stressing that Obama got 4.5 million fewer votes in 2012 than in 2008.
“The Obama team had the social science studies that showed how you can increase turnout by telling a prospective voter how his or her neighbors plan to vote,” Corsi noted.
He said the Facebook strategy analyzed by Baker is “very powerful, when the Obama campaign accesses your friends to ask if they know you plan to vote for Obama.”
If Baker is correct, Corsi stressed, the Facebook strategy rapidly moves into the liability column if the Obama campaign did not adequately research the information-access restrictions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
“The geeks in the ‘cave’ in Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters were trolling for votes over the Internet wherever and however they could find them,” Corsi said. “It would not surprise me if Obama’s computer geniuses cut legal corners on the Internet, much like hackers couldn’t care less if they violate a few federal laws breaking through firewalls.”
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Friday, July 12, 2013
Not Guilty -- Beyond Reasonable Doubt
By Pat Buchanan
That the prosecution in the Zimmerman trial asked the judge to allow a verdict of "third-degree murder" -- i.e.,
For George Zimmerman's defense has proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he shot Trayvon Martin not out of malice, rage or hate -- but in a desperate act of self-defense.
Zimmerman was being beaten "ground-and-pound,"
Even the prosecution is now conceding Trayvon might have been on top, and is now scrambling for a compromise verdict on a lesser charge than second-degree murder, a charge that never should have been brought. Indeed, this trial should never have been held.
What we have witnessed in Sanford, Fla., is the prosecution of an innocent man for murder because the politically and socially powerful demanded it.
That Trayvon is dead is a tragedy, and an avoidable tragedy. But it was not murder. And it does not justify railroading a man who, whatever his mistakes that night -- and George Zimmerman made them -- committed no crime.
The case comes down to four questions. And the answers, supported by the evidence, testimony and common sense, point straight to an acquittal.
First, who was the aggressor?
All agree it would have been better if Zimmerman had never left his car or followed Trayvon that night.
Yet, ask yourself:
Would a pudgy, out-of-shape 28-year-old with a gun, facing a 17-year-old athletic kid, 4 inches taller, with a longer reach, throw a punch and start a fistfight with him?
If Zimmerman threw the first punch, what would be his motive? If you have a gun and your adversary does not, is not the sensible stance to keep your distance so you can be free to pull the gun? Who armed with a pistol starts a fistfight with a suspicious stranger?
Moreover, Trayvon's body showed no signs of having ever been punched, while George's nose looks like he was sucker-punched.
Second, who was on top in those final moments of the fight?
If Zimmerman was on top and Trayvon was on his back, Trayvon would have been found on his back. He was found dead on his stomach.
If Zimmerman was on top and Trayvon was on his stomach, he would have been shot in the back. He was shot in the chest.
How could Trayvon have been found lying on his face, with a bullet hole in his chest, if Zimmerman was sitting on top of him? Only if George Zimmerman, after shooting Trayvon, would have turned him over as he lay dying. No one has even suggested that.
Why was the back of Zimmerman's jacket soaking wet, and the back of Trayvon's dry, if Trayvon was on the bottom? Why were the knees of Trayvon's pants wet, if he was on the bottom?
Third, who was screaming for help?
His mother, brother and father say it was Trayvon. George's mother, father and half a dozen friends say it is George's voice on the tape, screaming for help.
Trayvon's father and brother apparently told investigators initially that the voice was not Trayvon's, or they did not know. And the eyewitness John Good says the guy on the bottom in the red jacket, George Zimmerman, was the one screaming.
But, again, let us assume it was Trayvon screaming.
Why would he be screaming? If he was being beaten up martial arts style on the ground, would Trayvon not have had cuts and bruises?
What, exactly, was George Zimmerman doing to this 17-year-old football player that he should be screaming for help?
Where is the physical evidence that Trayvon had been hurt in any way before he was shot? Is screaming how a tough 17-year-old male reacts in a fistfight, even one he is losing?
Trayvon was a stranger in that neighborhood, and George was the neighborhood watch guy. Which of the two is more likely to be yelling for help from the neighbors?
Fourth, was the use of a firearm justified, even if Zimmerman was losing the fight and being beaten up?
Were his injuries that serious? Was he really is danger of grave bodily harm?
Experts disagree. But the real question is: What did Zimmerman think at the time? And judging by those piercing screams, was not that screaming man frightened, even terrified?
Trayvon's parents think these were the desperate cries for help of a son about to be killed. But if they were Zimmerman's cries, could George not have had those same thoughts?
George Zimmerman should have informed Trayvon he was the neighborhood watch. Trayvon should not have pummeled him. Both made mistakes. One is dead. To send the other to prison for what happened that night would be an act of vengeance, not justice, an invocation of the old lex talionis -- an eye for an eye.
That's not what America is supposed to be about.
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