Good morning, and welcome to The Epoch Times News Brief for Thursday, June 13, 2024. I’m Bill Thomas, and we’ve got some really interesting news stories to share with you today. First up, arrests have been made in an absentee ballot case in Connecticut, the U.S. Supreme Court hands President Joe Biden a temporary win, and New York’s former governor says don’t blame him for a deadly nursing home mandate. Also, in Texas, a pastor gets sentenced for stealing, and we take a look at why we should all be worried about China-linked cyber campaigns.
4 Arrests Made in Connecticut Absentee Ballot Case
A Bridgeport city councilman and a Democratic Party operative have been criminally charged for illegally possessing another person’s absentee ballot. Alfredo Castillo, who represents Bridgeport City Council’s 136th District, and Bridgeport Democratic Party Vice Chairwoman Wanda Geter-Pataky are accused of mishandling absentee ballots in the 2019 Democratic Party mayoral primary.Campaign workers Nilsa Heredia and Josephine Edmonds were also arrested. Three of the four are charged with tampering with a witness, and three were charged with misrepresenting eligibility requirements for voting by absentee ballot.
Mr. Castillo’s charges include failing to maintain an absentee ballot distribution list, misrepresenting eligibility requirements for voting by absentee ballot and failing to sign as an assister on an absentee ballot application.
The arrests are long overdue, according to mayoral candidate John Gomes, who lost to incumbent mayor Joe Ganim in a court-ordered election in February. He says the state has had this evidence since 2019 and that consequences in the future need to be faster and straight to the point.
Connecticut’s chief state attorney says the integrity of our voting process is vital to democracy and he hopes these prosecutions send a message that deters tampering with election results in the future in Connecticut. The State Elections Enforcement Commission is currently investigating the Bridgeport mayoral election.
Supreme Court Won’t Consider Challenge to Biden’s Order on Elections Until Sept. 30
The order issued by President Biden calls on all federal agencies, including the prison system, to help increase voter registration and participation, but critics say the order is designed to benefit Democrats and not Republicans.Twenty-seven state lawmakers in Pennsylvania are contesting the order issued in March 2021. It requires every federal agency to submit a plan for voter registration and participation to Susan Rice, the president’s domestic policy adviser.
Pennsylvania lawmakers argue the order is unconstitutional and say that voter registration drives are not a legitimate function of the federal government. They say the Constitution’s Elections Clause places primary responsibility for administering federal elections in the hands of state legislatures, with limited oversight by Congress. They add that the president can’t force all the federal agencies to get involved in voter registration and participation.
A U.S. district judge dismissed the lawsuit in March, finding that the individual state legislators lacked standing. The plaintiffs then took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying they wanted to fast-track consideration of the issue before November’s election. The high court denied the motion in May without comment, but they say they’ll consider it on Sept. 30—not in time for the election.
Cuomo Blames COVID-19 Nursing Home Order on Unknown Staffer During Testimony to Congress
A March 2020 directive from the New York Department of Health stated that nursing home operators could not refuse to accept residents even if they tested positive for COVID-19. Nursing homes were also prevented from requiring COVID testing if hospital staff determined the residents were medically stable before discharging them. At the time, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo also said that nursing home operators could lose their licenses or be fined if they didn’t follow state policies.At a hearing yesterday, Mr. Cuomo said that he was not responsible for the order.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), said it’s hard to believe that the former governor didn’t know that the mandate came out of his administration. She added: “The governor finds out about this directive that kills thousands of seniors, a month later. And he didn’t do an internal investigation to find out who this lowly staff member was? That to me is unconscionable.”
More than 15,000 nursing home residents in New York state died from COVID-19, according to state data. Those numbers rose after Mr. Cuomo left office. That’s when several state agencies discovered that the Cuomo administration had deliberately undercounted nursing home deaths.
The former governor had previously blamed health care workers and family members of residents for bringing COVID-19 into the nursing homes.
Mr. Cuomo pointed to guidance from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, but the problem with that was, it stated that the facilities should only accept patients with COVID if they could follow specific rules, and those rules included isolating the patients in their own wing for two weeks.
Despite everything, Mr. Cuomo went on to say, knowing what he knows now, he would not change the directive, but he would have communicated about it more.
The former governor appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic under a subpoena.
Texas Pastor Sentenced to 35 Years for Stealing Real Estate From Churches
Whitney Foster, former pastor of the True Foundation Non-Denominational Church, was convicted in May of creating fraudulent documents to take possession of three churches across Dallas County. Dallas County Criminal District Attorney John Creuzot says stealing real estate is an incredibly serious and damaging crime.The scheme affected the First Christian Church of Lancaster, Canada Drive Christian Church in Dallas, and the Church at Nineveh in Dallas.
The Dallas County DA’s office says that two of the properties remain under Mr. Foster’s or his congregation’s name, while the third church is embroiled in legal complications reportedly caused by Mr. Foster’s actions.
The 56-year-old pastor was sentenced to 35 years in prison for theft of property worth $300,000 or more. The combined value of all three church properties exceeds $800,000.
So you know, Mr. Foster had a prior criminal history, including convictions for theft and arson.
China-Linked Cyber Campaign Infiltrated Dozens of Western Governments: Dutch Intelligence
The Dutch government says that a cyber campaign that infiltrated their defense network is much larger than previously thought and that it has infiltrated tens of thousands of government and defense systems worldwide.The campaign, known as COATHANGER, is linked to communist China. It exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the FortiGate firewall system used by the Netherlands and other nations on many government networks. Zero-day vulnerabilities exist when a software update is first deployed.
Dutch experts say the damage from the breach was limited because of network segmentation. But, the Netherlands’ National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) says in its investigation, it discovered that COATHANGER compromised 20,000 systems across dozens of Western governments, international organizations, and a large number of companies within the defense industry. Additionally, it said that the attackers used the intrusion to install malware on some of those compromised targets to guarantee continued access to those systems. The malware has still not been cut off.
The NCSC went on to say, like many hackers, the COATHANGER campaign targeted “edge devices” like firewalls, VPN servers, routers, and email servers that connect a system to the wider network.
Numerous reports have found that China-backed actors associated with both Chinese intelligence and law enforcement are behind the world’s largest online influence operations.
So you know, U.S. intelligence leaders said earlier this year, they dismantled Chinese malware, which had been planted on hundreds of devices and threatened vital U.S. infrastructure, including water, energy, oil, and air traffic control systems.
This is a story we’re going to keep a very close watch on.
Time just screamed by today, so we’ll wrap things up and make that one our last story on the Thursday edition of the Epoch Times News Brief, and hard to believe that it’s almost Friday.
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And finally, as we do each and every day on this program, we wrap things up with a very “notable” quote:
It was A.A. Milne who said: “Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
A.A. Milne was best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, as well as for children’s poetry.
For all of us here at The Epoch Times News Brief, I’m Bill Thomas. Thanks a million for starting your day with us, enjoy the rest of your Thursday, and we’ll see you right back here tomorrow for the Friday edition of The Epoch Times News Brief! Have an awesome day today. Bye for now.
