Thread by @ai_jared

From today's covo between @nikoCSFB and Jared Beck (this is only a partial, edited transcript)

Jared: Let me give a brief overview, because I know a lot of people are joining the story in the middle and they're concerned about what is happening to Bernie Sanders in 2020.

This lawsuit my firm filed was back in 2016, which was the first season on the "DNC rigs the election against Bernie Sanders" now we're in Season 2, and we noticed that the plot is the same, and the action is the same, even worse - even more blatant.

Back in 2016, My wife and I were big Bernie supporters, we put a lot our our own resources into his campaign, we made videos to support his campaign, we did phone banks, we were part of the huge energy that supported the Bernie Sanders movement in 2016.

And then we started to see signs that the process was not being done the right way, but we were still in a state of ignorance because we didn't quite know what was going on, this was the first time we really threw ourselves into a political campaign...

we were trying to figure things out and then @nikoCSFB walked into our office, back in spring of 2016 and Niko had really damning evidence that Bernie Sanders was actually being undermined from within his own campaign, in North and South Carolina,

and Niko provided us with social media postings and other materials showing ...strong evidence of infiltration...

one day (staffers) would be working for Bernie Sanders and the day after the primary was concluded in S. Carolina, they were on Twitter, all in for Hillary, this was some very suspicious stuff, so we started investigating w/ Niko the possibility of bringing a class action lawsuit

against the DNC based on what we were starting to see of a pattern of rigging the election for Hillary Clinton. And that investigation was ongoing, and what happened in June of 2016? - this shadowy figure called Guccifer 2.0 dropped a whole bunch of documents on a public blog -

internal documents fro the DNC which shows that the DNC itself was advancing the Hillary Clinton campaign and not abiding by the principles of its own charter, which required the DNC to conduct the primary process in a fair and evenhanded manner.

So suddenly we had internal proof, memorandums, research suddenly, almost magically come into our hands. This was even before Wikileaks + and this is something that people may not be familiar with if they weren't following events closely at the time,

but Guccifer 2.0 actually preceded Wikileaks by several months + a lot of people weren't really paying attention to it. But as lawyers involved in the investigation process, because of what Niko had brought to us, we were on that very, very quickly.

As soon as we got the Guccifer stuff, we started getting calls from Bernie Sanders supporters, wondering if they had any legal recourse that they could bring right then and there. And this was even before the convention, this is in June of 2016.

So we looked into it and we decided that we had very strong and substantiated claims for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty and others that we could file on the basis of what we got from Guccifer 2.0 in federal court,

and we did that in June, we filed our compliant as a class action. Elizabeth, my wife and partner hired a company called One Source Process in D.C. to serve the complaint on the DNC and its then-chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz,

this is before DWS resigned as a result of these allegations...so Elizabeth hired One Source Process in D.C. to serve the complaint and we actually came up with the idea of doing a live stream of the actual service process to show the moment this complaint was served at DNC HQ.

Interestingly, and disturbingly enough, when the the DNC's lawyers made their appearance in the case, they made a motion to dismiss the case based on the contention that our process server, a gentleman by the name of Shawn Lucas, had not served the correct person at the DNC HQ,

without knowing that we had a whole video posted at YouTube which showed the interchange between Shawn Lucas and the DNC personnel accepting the complaint on behalf of DNC and DWS.

We were in the process of thinking about the best way to respond to this motion, and we were in the process of getting an affidavit from Shawn Lucas himself, as the person who would testify in federal court as to the correctness of service,

when we got really one of the most shocking moments, probably the most shocking moment of my life, when news came over social media that Shawn Lucas had been found dead, on his bathroom floor, by his girlfriend.

and you have to put this in context, because this was not the first strange and unexpected death, because just one week before, a man by the name of Seth Rich had been found murdered on the streets of D.C.

and by this time of course Wikileaks had already dropped their documents and Seth Rich was reputed to be the leaker, and he was found murdered - still an unsolved murder by the way - I believe it's the only murder of a Caucasian in DC that has never been solved.

He was not a low-level DNC person, he was in charge of voter outreach, voting systems, voting irregularity...and of course they's a lot of evidence that he was a very strong Bernie Sanders supporter...

Sean Lucas' very unexpected death came a week after, and suddenly in the span of a week we had not one but two dead witnesses in a federal lawsuit.

Outside of whether or not (Seth Rich) was a leaker, and I have no knowledge one way or the other one or another on that, outside of whether he was the leaker

Seth Rich would have been a witness in our case, a very, very important witness because he was in charge of voting integrity issues...

Niko: He was literally not just (that for) the Hillary Clinton campaign but the DNC specifically, so any complaints he may have received, anything he may have had to reconcile or send his team to reconcile, that would have been massive for us in the discovery stage.

And it should also be mentioned about Shawn Lucas - that none of us were able to get an autopsy (report) on Shawn Lucas.

Jared: That's right, we got an email from the DC police that reports on his death and summarized findings of three different substances in his body which are unusual to be found in a combination...

everything that I have seen + heard about Shawn Lucas as a person (I didn't know him personally), but he was not a drug user, that he was in excellent physical condition, a young man (he was in his late 20s) -

so when this all happened, the lawyers on the legal team, we basically had a pow-wow, we were basically in a state of shock. We took this as a direct message to us that if "you keep involved in this case, these things are going to happen to you"

Niko: Beranton Whisenant - the guy who was also investigating DWS specifically, or something in that district - the federal lawyer who appeared (dead) on the beach -

Jared: He was a prominent lawyer in South Florida, his body washed up in Hollywood - and he actually worked

- I believe he was a federal attorney at the time, it's been said that he was working on issues of immigration fraud, I've never gotten any real hard evidence on that.

The official report on him that it was a suicide...that also happened in the same time-frame...so we were wondering does it even made sense to continue with this, we all had families to worry about, how much do you want to put yourself in harms way, what the heck is going on?

but we decided that we had to continue with this case, because if you're not going to stand on your principles in life, I mean, what else do you have?

We have a very principled legal team, we've very stubborn , when we get a case, we stick with it to the bitter end, whatever happens. I mean, not all lawyers are like that, and I think it is what makes our practice unique.

But in any case, we actually had a hearing about the service of process issue...we had an extensive hearing in which we played the video, ultimately the judge issued a ruling in which he admonished the DNC for its conduct in the case, around the service of process

but he directed us to re-serve the complaint on the DNC to ensure that there would be no issues with the the service question as the case moved up, which we did and we had no problem the second time around.

and then that led the DNC to file another motion to dismiss, based on the concept that the DNC is a private origination, and that its First Amendment rights would be threatened

by our ability as Bernie Sanders donors, supporters, Dem party voters, to bring a lawsuit + potentially get a judgement again the DNC. That was the main argument they made, they made other arguments as well.

so we had a second hearing in front of Judge Zloch on those issues, a very long hearing. The Judge came prepared with a whole series of questions that he wanted answered, and

it was actually at that hearing that the DNC's main lawyer, a gentleman by the name of Bruce Spiva got up + declared in open court that in the view of the DNC, they had the right to choose the candidate - the nominee - any way they wanted to,

even in his own words, to paraphrase, by going into back rooms, and smoking cigars, and picking the candidates that way.

Niko: and he said that it was not obligatory for them to follow their own charter, which is bizarre.

Jared: It is bizarre, and according to the DNC's counsel, the charter is basically meaningless political rhetoric, and not a binding obligation, and that was another argument that they made.

Niko: Which, I may add is not true, because the DNC is a non-profit org...one of things you have to do in order to actually get incorporation is to create a charter, and very specifically follow that charter,

and if you break the rules of that charter, while taking money from donors of any size, that's actually the #1 reason that non-profits get sued, and a lot of people don't know that...Bruce Spiva tied to make it completely political, the whole conversation was politicized...

Jared: I didn't expect Spiva to get up there and actually say in open court that the DNC had no obligation to follow its charter, and that it could actually go in back rooms and pick the candidates.

Because not only is that a ludicrous argument on its face, in terms of getting people to stay in the Democratic party, to join the Democratic party, identify with the Democratic party, it's political poison to do that on the record.

And I think this was a very important moment in this case, by virtue of what Spiva said in court, we secured a very important admission from the DNC about how it conducts it affairs.

So irrespective of whether the DNC is correct or not about the binding nature of its charter, the DNC believes it has the right to rig elections, and that's very important.

Niko: Judge Zloch did say, even though he dismissed it on jurisdictional issues, he did say in the dismissal that he did not recognize the trivialization of the DNC's charter.

Jared: He would not accept the DNC's trivialization of its charter obligations. He dismissed us on jurisdictional grounds,

essentially accepting the argument that there were First Amendment concerns given the rights of the political party to associate and ultimately conduct its affairs, and in that his view, the remedy was with the voters and not the courts.

He relied on some Supreme Court case law for this order.

He also said something very interesting at one of the hearings...the second hearing at the very end, he said (and this is direct quote) that was that "Democracy demands the truth, so that the people can make intelligent decisions".

And I think there's many ways to read that statement, but I think that what he was getting at in light of the order that he ultimately did issue was that it's important, regardless of what the judicial outcome of a case like this is,

it's important for the truth of how the Democratic party runs its affairs to come into public view, because ultimately its a matter for the voters to accept or reject these practices at the ballot box.

Now, I don't agree with Judge Zloch's order, and I don't necessarily agree with that line of thinking, but I think in his mind he was trying to reconcile what I believe he saw, this outrageous conduct, with his belief that the courts really don't have a jurisdiction over this.

It's interesting because once you get into the Appellate phase of a case like this, and that's where we're at now, you can really dig into these issues in depth, and go into the case law at a level you're not able to penetrate in the trial courts,

simply because you don't have as much time to drill down on every argument. And that's what we're doing now. We took the case up first to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal, which is the first level of the federal appellate system

and we made arguments focusing on the issue of fiduciary duty, owed by a political party to its members, focusing on the concept of fraud, the fact that people paid $$ in reliance on this being a fair election,

so if its not a fair election it's just like any other fraudulent ponzi scheme out there - somebody sells you a bill of goods, and you paid money and reliance on it and it turns out that they made material misrepresentations to you.

Remember back in 2016, the DNC was all over the place in the media trying to do damage control, and assure people that this was a fair and evenhanded process, and there were a number of statements we cited in our complaint, from DWS herself, as well as the press secretary

and so forth, that actually tried to reiterate that they were following the charter.

It's interesting this time around, in 2020, you don't see the DNC really - they're not even trying to pretend anymore! It's like "we're going to cancel the election"..."c'mon, it's Joe Biden"...

Niko: So now we're in the appeals court, the 11th circuit appeals court, you argued in court in front of -

Jared: a three judge panel...and we had a pretty lively discussion, I would say, the judges had a lot of questions.

We actually won on one of the issues, this kind of gets lost, there really has been no consistent reporting about this case, there have been some outlets that have done a good job writing articles but it's never been in the MSM...

well, the Washington Post actually characterized it as a "frivolous lawsuit", even though

if you read Judge Zloch's order, the last thing you would come away from thinking is that it's a frivolous case, given the very strong language that he uses describing the DNC's conduct and trivialization of its obligation.

But I'll tell you this, judges don't have four hour hearings on frivolous cases, they don't have time for that.

So really the only mainstream article was the one in the Washington Post, by that guy, I can't remember his name, but he basically defamed us.

We had a nice segment on RT with Lee Camp, but other than that, it has just not entered the national consciousness, because it's not something that anybody in the MSM, CNN or Fox, wants to report on.

I don't see this as a politics case anymore, I've removed myself from supporting candidates, I haven't given or been involved in anyone's campaign in 2020,

but I'm still very committed to this case, because as lawyers, we litigate the past, and you have to bring it to a legal conclusion.

The 11th Circuit upheld the dismissal, it issued a long order, it actually took quite a long time for the judges to issue their order, so the next step for us, and what we're working on now, is the Supreme Court.

And our brief in support of a petition for writ of certiorari (which is to get the Supreme Court to hear the case on the merits) is due March 26th, and it's been a very educational process for me, having written the first draft of what will ultimately be our writ,

and there are a lot of issues that we being up, but I think the main one is this fiduciary duty issue, and here's the really interesting thing that finally congealed actually at the Supreme Court briefing level for me,

and again, you really dig in to the legal case law at the appellate level, and higher you go, the deeper you go, and that's just kind of the nature of the process,

and what I found, and what is going to be a major part of our brief, is a series of cases that go back to the first half of the 20th century, and they're called the white primary cases.

And nobody teaches these cases in law school, I was completely unaware of the existence of these cases, and I took constitutional law with Larry Tribe at Harvard Law.

So you would think that if you're going to cover this period of constitutional law it's going to be in a class like that, but he completely skipped over it.

And actually the textbook that he uses devotes a tiny little section in this huge casebook to briefly summarizes these cases in a trivial way, and I don't remember ever studying them, but

they're fascinating, because they actually prove that everything the DNC has been telling us about its status as a private organization that is completely protected by the First Amendment + has no duty to its members + can do things the way it wants, everything is a complete lie.

that this line of argument was already rejected by the Supreme Court in these cases that were brought by black voters in the south, in the Jim Crow era, when after the Civil War, it was expressly defined in the 13th/14th/15th amendments that blacks would have the right to vote.

but of course the political establishment at the time tied to do everything in its power not to comply. How did it do it? Well, it did it through the Democratic party, in the south, because the south didn't have Republicans at that time, this is after Reconstruction-

they sent all the Republicans back up north, and basically the old Democratic party was still in control. It had what were called white primaries -

What's a white primary? Well, they changed their rules, and said that you cannot become a member of the Democratic party unless you are white.

Niko: Which means that you couldn't even win office nor could you vote for the people who would control the outcome of your lives, because there were no Republicans at the time.

Jared: Right, in the South, there were no Republican candidates. There were only really primaries, because there were no Republican to actually challenge the Democrats, and if there were, they wouldn't have got any votes, because the Democrats controlled everything.

So there was actually a doctor in El Paso, TX many by the name of Nixon and he was black doctor, and he showed up at the polling station, and he asked for his ballot - this is back in 1920 -

and the polling officials were like "well, we can't give you a ballot", and he said "what do you mean, the constitution now says I have a right to vote"

and they said "well, that may be so, but this is a primary, not an election - conducted by the Democratic party - a private enterprise - and the Democratic party has determined that only white can be members" -

okay, so he took that all the way up the Supreme Court.

And there were a series of cases, actually two involving Dr. Nixon and another case that followed on, and the Supreme Court had to deal with the same issues that we're talking about now -

which is, whether the Democratic party can just set the rules and pick whoever they want, because they are free to set the rules however they want - and that includes if they only want to have an association of white people, then that's their right.

And ultimately it took a long time - it took years and years of litigation and multiple cases, but ultimately the Supreme Court came to the result that #1, Democratic primaries are elections under U.S. law,

#2, there was a very powerful opinion, issued in the 30s, + it basically said that if you allow the Democratic party to circumvent constitutional rights, the right to vote, by using this fiction of private association, then you've essentially circumvented constitutional rights,

and ultimately that was the end of the white primaries, because the Supreme Court declared them illegal, and that led us to the civil rights era...

...it's been erased, and it's been superseded by a line of cases that really started in the 70s and 80s and started to really invoke the First Amendment as a protection against states from stepping in and really trying to regulate the primary process.

When Dr. Nixon goes to the polling station in El Paso, he's just trying to get his ballot - he's not concerned about winners and losers, and who he's voting for, he's just trying to participate.

And what we are going to trying to stress with the Supreme Court is that that kind of disenfranchisement is no different than disenfranchisement when you rig an election behind the scenes,

because you're basically denying all of the people who don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the election as voters,

which is what they are, because the Supreme Court has, contrary to what the DNC wants us to believe, established that Democratic primaries are elections.

Niko: So in layman's terms, what would a successful outcome in the Supreme Court appeal?

Jared: So, what we're filing on March 26th is a petition for writ of certiorari, which is a basically a special writ that the Supreme Court will issue to review the appellate and trial proceedings,

from not only the highest state courts in the country, but also the federal appellate courts, such as the 11th circuit, which is the last decision we got. They take very, very few cases, it's like winning the lottery.

They haven't made a decision on if they'll take this yet, we're just filing the writ, but the chances are very low, very slim, I think it's like .6% or something, because this is the last court of resort for so many issues...

so the Supreme Court gets thousands and thousands of cert petitions every year, they have a team of clerks who are assigned to read through all the petitions and provide memorandums to the justices at these conferences they have every week,

to decide whether or not they're going to grant the petition.

Granting the petition is only the first stage. That basically means that the court would put the case on its calendar, and there would be a round of merits briefing, and the Court may in its order may say that they specifically want to hear on this issue, or that issue.

(end of partial transcript)

Many thanks again to Niko House and Jared Beck!