Fair elections – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Tell Truth to Lies.

David Posnett — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:40:35 +0000

By James Ewing

On Wednesday Jan 6, 121 members of the US House of representatives rejected the election results from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.

138 House members rejected the results from Pennsylvania.

Authorities have called this election the most secure in our history. No results, none, were challenged within states themselves. No meaningful fraud was detected anywhere, by any judiciary, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And yet these elected GOP officials, “leaders” as they are called, chose to oppose the results anyway.

Our representative Lee Zeldin, was among those opposing the results of all contested states.

I have no doubt that the majority, if not all of these representatives, knew the election results were accurate. I assume their objections were based upon narrow ambitious calculations tying their fortunes to the deranged, personality cult of one very damaged man, Donald Trump.

We generally presume that our elected leaders have reliable information and act reasonably on what they know. We depend on our leaders to keep us informed, help us understand what is going on in their respective realms of authority. Leadership is defined as “an act or instance of leading; guidance; direction, the position or function of a leader, a person who guides or directs a group”.

Ideally, If we are to be governed wisely and well our leaders must tell us the truth, speak truth to lies, without posturing with what they think we want to hear. In 1868, a New York Democrat declared “if a man is ignorant, he needs the ballot for his protection all the more”. For our protection we need our leaders to be truthful. Rather than leading with truth, Lee Zeldin, along with his nefarious GOP congressional cohorts, have spoken lies to truth. By endorsing the lies of election fraud and thereby telling supporters that they actually had a chance to overturn this past election, Zeldin has utterly failed his leadership responsibilities. He has inflamed inane conspiracy theories and false accusations. And finally, last week, by thoughtless, senseless opposition to these many valid state election results, he almost certainly encouraged an actual insurrection with deadly violence done to our precious, fragile, and now stunned constitutional representative democracy.

Lee Zeldin can no longer claim to legitimately represent our constitutional democracy nor serve the good people of our CD1 district. He has lost the credibility, respect, and basic trust a real leader deserves. He should resign immediately from his position.

He and his various colleagues in opposition are now probably even liable for the federal crime of sedition—“conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state; incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government”.

New York: Most Unequal State in the Nation!

David Posnett — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 22:18:11 +0000

A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) recently found that New York State is home to the highest concentration of extreme wealth in the United States. New York State also has the greatest income inequality in the United States. By both of these measures, New York is the most unequal state in the nation.

The Fiscal Policy Institute’s latest brief, Inequality in New York and Options for Progressive Tax Reform, details ITEP’s findings as they apply to New York State, reviews additional research and data on New York State’s income and wealth inequality, and lays out their implications for New York State tax policy.

Key findings include:

New Yorkers worth over $30 million collectively own $6.7 trillion in wealth. These ultra-rich New Yorkers are just 0.4 percent of the state population.

New York’s ultra-rich also hold about one-fifth of the total wealth held by all ultra-rich Americans — the highest concentration of wealth in any state.

Of the $6.7 trillion held by ultra-rich New Yorkers, ITEP estimates that $3.1 trillion consists of unrealized capital gains. Much of this wealth will never be taxed under current law.

New York State tax implications include:

New York’s current tax system, taken as a whole, is regressive: the wealthy pay about the same combined state and local tax rate as the bottom 40 percent.

Because of the substantial overlap between high income earners and owners of extreme wealth, increasing the progressivity of the existing Personal Income Tax would help to address extreme inequality.

At a minimum, the state should not allow the current PIT rates on high earners to expire, as they are currently set to, in 2027.

New York can further address extreme inequality, and increase the overall progressivity of its tax system, through a number of tax policy options, including:

Increasing tax rates on long-term capital gains for high-income taxpayers

Taxing unrealized capital gains on a mark-to-market basis for wealthy taxpayers

Increasing taxes on business profits, such as those earned through pass-through entities such as LLCs, and targeting the profit-shifting of multinational corporations

Taxing inherited wealth, or fixing the estate tax by lowering the exemption threshold and eliminating step-up in basis

Revising the state constitution to permit a direct wealth tax

This will be relevant after December 6, 2022, when “Invest in Our New York” establishes its strategy/agenda for the legislative session.

Geraldine R. Maslanka

Teens Molded by the Trump Era

David Posnett — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 21:16:07 +0000

Several recent articles have examined the influence of the Trump era on teens, at pre-voting ages. Claire Cain Miller looks at ‘What Teenagers Have Learned From a Tumultuous Time in Politics’ (April 22nd 2021 in the NYTimes). Emily Badger and Claire Cain Miller write about “How the Trump Era Is Molding the Next Generation of Voters“

Soon-to-be voters say they’re disillusioned by what they’ve observed, but many are also motivated to political action.

I was a teenager in the sixties. I remember the passion I felt when witnessing on TV a Buddhist monk sit down on a Saigon street, dowse himself with gasoline, light a fire and burn to death. I remember the passion I felt when the 6-day war broke out with many Arabic neighboring states threaten to invade Israel: I immediately went to the Israeli embassy to sign up as a volunteer! The events of the day had to have had a lasting effect on my adult views and politics.

So I understand, that for today’s teenagers the presidency of Donald Trump, the BLM protests following the murder of George Floyd and others, the pandemic, and the insurrection culminating with the storming of the US Capitol, are events that must have shaped the political views of teenagers.

In the NYT, MIller writes: “Apparently, research shows that a voting generation is typically shaped for life by what happens politically in their teen years and early 20s. What have teenagers taken away from all this? We asked 604 of them, ages 13 to 17, from around the country, in a poll by Dynata for The New York Times. A little more than half the teenagers surveyed were girls. And nearly half were Black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian-American. (We talked to more of them because Generation Z will be the first in which nearly half of the electorate is nonwhite.)”

The survey revealed disillusion, hardened political lines, but also motivation to become involved.

“Simultaneously, we have this caustic, scorched-earth politics of the Trump administration, particularly for people of color, and at the same time we see young people exercising power and influence and organizing and showing up in the marches and the election,” said Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, a political scientist at Purdue. “This is their political socialization, so we have to see how it plays out.”

A future woman president? Eighty-seven percent of them said they hoped a woman would be elected president in their lifetime; 47 percent of Trump supporters hoped so.

Confidence in government? About half agreed that government had their interests in mind. But less than half of girls or respondents who were Black, Hispanic, Native or Asian-American agreed, and only one-third of Trump supporters did. White boys were most likely to believe the government represented them. Minority girls were 21 percentage points less likely to agree that the government had their interests in mind. White boys were 20 percentage points more likely to be interested in running for office than boys of color; white girls were eight points more likely than girls of color.

Effect of the Trump presidency: In regard to political ambition it made 1/3 of teenagers of both genders less interested in running (with a larger effect on those of color.) But it also made about 1/2 of survey respondents, and nearly 3/4 of Trump-supporting teenagers, more interested in running.

By comparison, the 2020 election made 2/3 of teenagers more interested in running.

Other research has also found that for some young people who were disappointed by the Trump presidency, it awakened their interest in political involvement, according to David Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht.

“What we found is that there was great disillusionment in democracy among adolescents, especially girls, especially those who think of themselves as Democrats,” Mr. Campbell said. “Then we found this upsurge in protest activity, so the disillusionment, rather than driving them out of politics, pushed them into political activity.”

Their research also suggests that the surge of women running has been encouraging to young people — among liberals and some conservatives as well.

Young people are not likely to forget the activism they’re learning now, said Ella Robinson, a 16-year-old in Silver Spring, Md. The Trump era has taught her and her fellow students political savvy, she said, as their spontaneous school walkouts have been replaced by organized protests, with permits and tailored messages around issues like gun control and climate change.

“People in my generation are very aware that walkouts can only go so far,” Ms. Robinson said. “Voting needs to happen.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/upshot/trump-era-molding-young-voters.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

Trump: the worst president in the history of the United States

David Posnett — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 23:42:13 +0000

Author Karl Grossman

Reprinted from The Times of Israel

By Karl Grossman

About the Author Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury who has specialized in investigative reporting for 45 years. He is the host of the TV program “Enviro Close-Up,” the writer and presenter of numerous TV documentaries and the author of six books.

The impeachment of Donald Trump — the first president of the United States to be impeached twice — is fitting for the worst president in the history of the U.S.

The attack by his supporters on the Capitol in Washington, D.C. — lawless, an attack on democracy, a U.S. counterpart of the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s.

It was a horror representative of his tenure.

As stated in the resolution titled “Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he “incited violence” against the government of the United States.” It noted that at a rally of Trump supporters before the insurrection, “he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it in a landslide,’” and “encouraged …lawless action at the Capitol.” And this “followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call…during which…Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffenberger, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffenberger if he failed to do so.”

“In all this,” the resolution continued, Trump “threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power…”

Trump, “by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.”

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, among the most respected publications in the U.S., wrote immediately after the election of 2016 in a piece entitled “An American Tragedy” — “The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.”

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times wrote a front-page piece last month about how the “final days of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common in history or literature than a modern White House. ….At times, Mr. Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury.” And he quoted a Shakespearian scholar at Harvard University, Jeffrey R. Wilson, author of the book Shakespeare and Trump, saying: “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

It came on January 6 in the assault on the Capitol.

“If inciting an insurrection is not enough to get a president impeached, what is?” asked Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas before the House vote for impeachment.

Trump had tweeted is followers on December 20^th— “Big protest in DC on January 6^th. Be there, will be wild!”

It was wild, and deadly.

In a speech in front of the White House on January 6^th, addressing his backers who had arrived, he declared: “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…and we’re going to the Capitol.” He added: “You have to be strong.”

Trump’s call was preceded by his lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani proclaiming “let’s have trial by combat.”

Giuliani took an oath to be an attorney to adhere to rule of law and represented Trump in many court challenges to Trump’s election defeat with claims that judges found totally untrue. But Giuliani opted instead, in violation of that oath, for “trial by combat.” The New York State Bar Association this week announced it was launching an inquiry into whether to remove Giuliani from its ranks for his comments at the Trump rally.

Trump tapped into a vein of racism and other poisons in the United States.

As a Jew with all members of the families of both my paternal and maternal grandparents who did not get out of Hungary and Poland in time murdered in the Holocaust, my heart stopped seeing one of the Trump supporters rioting at the Capitol sporting a shirt saying “Camp Auschwitz” and below that arbeit macht frei.

I’ve been amazed that some Jews in the United States and Israel have been big supporters of Trump. His throwing the Kurds under the proverbial bus — his conferring with Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Israel-hating president, which was followed promptly by the attack on the Kurds by the Turkish military —demonstrated for Israel that Trump cannot be trusted.

Trump will turn on a dime.

I grew up in Queens in New York City, not far from Jamaica where Trump was raised. There are lots of Jews in Queens, of course. And Trump learned to “play” with them.

But should any Jew — indeed could anybody — trust him? Ask that of his former longtime personal attorney whom he abandoned, Michael Cohen, the son of a Holocaust survivor, who has been full of disclosures since. Trump, he has emphasized, is a bigot. And says Cohen of the “Trump I know in a nutshell…he projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well.”

Good for the Jews, good for anybody for any length of time? No.

Carl Bernstein, the U.S. journalist of Watergate fame, says Trump “will be in our history books as a dark, dark stain unlike any president of the United States.” And Bernstein investigated U.S. President Richard Nixon, forced to resign because of the Watergate scandal.

My rabbi, Dan Geffen, wrote to congregants after the Trump-incited attack on the Capitol about the Rabbinic sage Aytalyon saying: “Sages, be careful with your words! So as not to warrant the punishment of exile and be exiled to a land of ‘evil waters’ and the disciples who follow you drink and die, and thus the name of heaven becomes profaned.”

Said Rabbi Geffen: “There are numerous times in our tradition when the rabbis instruct us to guard our words carefully. Just as Creation begins with words, so too can destruction. Just as words of Torah are like mayim chayim (life-giving waters); words of hatred, selfishness and division are like a poisoned well. What we witnessed yesterday in Washington was a sad and painful reminder of the prescience of Avtalyon’s warning and the danger that is posed to all when words are perverted and weaponized. So let us not waste our breath on equivocations and calming platitudes. What happened yesterday was a disgrace — a stain on this country and its most fundamental principles, values and ethics. Every single one of us must feel the pain and shame of this moment, because it is now a part of our shared history.”

“The future of our country and our community will be defined by how we choose to respond to the stoked barbarism on display in the Capitol yesterday. And in this simple fact, I am filled not with despair, but with hope….These are indeed fraught times. Times filled with anger, pain, grief and a loss of hope. And it would be irresponsible to suggest that the problems and challenges we face as a country are easily addressed. Nevertheless, just as words of division can be used to poison the proverbial well; words of unity, hope and purpose can help clear and purify the miasma. There is much to be done to repair the fabric of our society, and we all have an important role to play in its repair. So let each of us do everything in our power to use the ignoble events of January 6, 2021 as motivation to inspire us to work together to return our beloved country to a land truly flowing with the life-giving waters of liberty, justice and equity for all!”

Trump has been a nightmare for the United States of America.

Thank heaven and a lot of hard political work that he will soon be gone, his final days concluding with a despicable, awful, violent attack on democracy.

Our democracy is broken. H.R. 1 can combat voter suppression and fix it

David Posnett — Sun, 14 Mar 2021 17:00:14 +0000

Mondaire Jones

Special to the USA TODAY Network: link here.

March 9, 2021

Our democracy is badly broken. Right now, Republicans in Arizona, Georgia and elsewhere are working hard to break it even further. But last week, my Democratic colleagues and I rose to repair and reconstruct it.

The For the People Act (H.R. 1), which passed the House of Representatives last week, will be the most significant improvement to our democracy since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. My colleagues in the Senate should act swiftly to send this bill to President Biden’s desk. It is required to save our democracy from the people who incited the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th.

The For the People Act is a comprehensive bill that establishes automatic voter registration, combats voter suppression, protects our elections from foreign interference, and ends partisan gerrymandering — a process by which representatives choose their voters rather than voters choose their representatives.

But I want to focus on how H.R. 1 changes how campaigns are funded, amplifying the voices of everyday Americans.

Our current campaign finance system gives the wealthy a megaphone and silences the rest of us. In 2016, just 400 mega-donors contributed a total of $1.5 billion – more than every small donor combined. Those donors are predominantly wealthy white men, and they predominantly contribute to white candidates.

Congress isn’t just funded by wealthy people — it’s full of them. More than 50% of lawmakers in the 116th Congress have a net worth of more than $1 million, compared to just three percent of the population. This is not by accident: our campaign finance system is rigged to favor wealthy candidates. They can fund their own campaigns. They’re more likely to have nest eggs they can rely on while campaigning. And when they need extra funds, they can lean on networks of affluent family and friends.

I experienced our broken campaign finance system firsthand in my own run for Congress. When I was considering running for office, the first question insiders asked me was not what I would fight for, not whether my community was behind me, but how much money I could raise.

My leading primary competitor never had to answer that question. As the son of a pharmaceutical billionaire, he didn’t have to raise any money at all. Instead, he spent $5.4 million of his inherited wealth to blanket the airwaves with TV commercials three months out from the primary election. In the general election, I faced yet another self-funding candidate who outspent me by pumping $1.5 million into his campaign.

Against these long odds, I was elected to Congress. As an openly gay, Black, working-class candidate whose community sent him to Congress, I’m an exception. But I shouldn’t be. With the small-donor matching system in H.R. 1, candidates like me could be the norm.

Small-donor matching is simple: for every dollar a regular person donates up to $200, public financing matches that dollar with $6. A $50 donation becomes a $350 donation. As a result, small donors would matter — fixing the toxic power dynamics that threaten our democracy.

Small-donor matching has already transformed New York politics for the better. The donors in New York City elections, which have a matching program, are by far more racially and socioeconomically diverse than the donors in New York State elections, which do not. H.R. 1 would take that transformation nationwide.

The same goes for candidates. Candidates of color disproportionately rely on small donations. But because big money drowns out small donors’ voices, we typically raise less money than our opponents. Thus, we are often prevented from even making the ballot. By multiplying the power of the people candidates of color rely on most, small-donor matching empowers more people to take their seats at the table.

When we can elect people who really represent us, we get a government that really serves all of us — not just the wealthy and well-connected. If Congress had more ordinary Americans, it surely would not be so indifferent to the needs of working families. My Democratic colleagues and I in this Congress are already proving that by passing real COVID-19 relief in the American Rescue Plan. And we’re just getting started.

For at least a decade, Democrats have promised that when we had the chance, we would fix our broken campaign finance system. It’s taken over 10 years, but we’re here. It’s time. If the Senate fails to follow through — if we compromise with corruption — we risk confirming many Americans’ beliefs that billionaires and corporations have captured both parties, that our elections offer no real choices, and that our democracy is a swamp in need of a strongman to drain it.

So let’s fight for H.R. 1 and its small-dollar matching program like our democracy depends on it — because it does.

Rep. Mondaire Jones represents New York’s 17th Congressional District, which includes most of Westchester County and all of Rockland County.

‘South Country Unites’ says Thank You

David Posnett — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 18:33:53 +0000

Seen on Bellport.com The Village News:

South Country Unites Celebrates Inauguration Day

On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, members of South Country Unites, SCU, displayed yard signs in front of their homes to commemorate this very special day. They wanted to thank those committed, honest, hard working citizens, across 50 states and the District of Columbia, who made democracy happen. The members of SCU dedicated their display…

• “To all people who spoke up for justice and integrity

• To candidates for offices big and small, who believed that they can make a difference

• To campaign staffs, who in the time of COVID-19, planned and instituted a new, safer way of campaigning

• To petition carriers, door-knockers, phone and text bankers, letter writers – those who felt strongly that the best candidate must win

• To Boards of Elections in thousands of counties across our country who justly implemented voting laws, set up polling places, distributed ballots, hired and trained workers, and who counted and re-counted millions of votes under pressure

• To poll workers, who believed enough in free and fair elections to work 8 or 12 or 16 hour days with face masks and gloves, risking serious illness, to assure that each eligible citizen voted

• To the poll watchers who volunteered to assure that voters were treated fairly and laws were upheld

• To judges and public officials who sought to assure fair and free elections

• And to the voters, 161 million of us who made a voting plan and implemented it to assure that our voices were heard”

“The Members of SCU, THANK YOU! We honor your commitment and your hard work. May we all continue to work to support our fragile, 233 year old experiment in democracy. May we support President Biden and Vice President Harris as they and we, the people of the United States, address the difficult problems that lie before us.”

Photos courtesy of South Country Unites

“Hyper-partisan and hypocritical nonsense” (Katie Vincentz, Zeldin Spokesperson)

David Posnett — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 22:36:34 +0000

Excellent reports on the topic:

Rep. Zeldin’s Backtrack on Fraud Claims Fails to Silence His Critics
EH Star: Attorneys urge investigation of ZELDIN.
Twenty-two lawyers file ethics complaint against Zeldin in connection with presidential election:

By Denise Civiletti – Jan 26, 2021, 8:29 am. RIVERHEAD LOCAL

Lee Zeldin speaking on the House floor during debate on objections to Arizona election results. Image: C-Span screenshot

Twenty-two New York lawyers have filed a complaint against Rep. Lee Zeldin, accusing him of violating “the most fundamental ethics rules, including participating in frivolous litigation, making false statements regarding the presidential election, and committing, arguably, a criminal act that reflects on his trustworthiness.”

The complaint asks the Attorney Grievance Committee of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, where Zeldin was admitted to the New York Bar in 2004, to initiate an “immediate investigation of Rep. Zeldin’s actions and consider sanctions for his conduct, up to and including revocation of Rep. Zeldin’s license to practice law in New York.”

The complaint says Zeldin participated in “frivolous” litigation and engaged in “professional misconduct” involving “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” by signing on to an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit brought in the U.S. Supreme Court by the State of Texas Dec. 8 that sought to invalidate the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — four battleground states won by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Zeldin was one of 126 House Republicans who signed the amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit, which was rejected by the Supreme Court on Dec. 11 for lack of standing, the legal right to sue.

The complaint to the grievance committee, a copy of which was obtained by RiverheadLOCAL Monday night, says Zeldin signed on to the brief “despite the fact that numerous courts in eight different states, including the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, had already dismissed such meritless claims.”

Beyond that, the complaint states, “In the absence of any evidence of systemic malfeasance or fraud, he made public statements questioning the results of the presidential election and has spent weeks undermining confidence in the credibility and integrity of our election process.”

Zeldin — a staunch, outspoken supporter of President Trump — continued to question the presidential election results “without proof,” despite the Electoral College’s ratification of the results, the complaint states.

The Trump campaign and Trump supporters brought a series unsuccessful legal challenges to the results of the election in those states.

In a series of about two dozen tweets since Election Day, Zeldin has questioned the election results, calling changes to election procedures in battleground states “unconstitutional irregularities.” He has tweeted frequently — most recently two days ago — about the need to protect “ballot integrity,” criticizing, as Trump has, mail-in voting.

Some states, including New York, changed voting procedures in 2020 to allow, as Zeldin put it in his tweet on Monday, “no excuse mail in balloting” because of the pandemic. Some of those changes, including New York’s, were made by executive orders during the state of emergency declared in the states in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Zeldin and others object to changes made to voting procedures established by state legislature — by what they characterize “executive fiat” and settlements of “friendly lawsuits” — as unconstitutional.

On Jan. 2, Zeldin tweeted: “Some insist everything President Trump & his supporters claim about the 2020 election is ‘evidence free’. That lie may be easy to rattle off, but it’s still a massive, destructive lie that will haunt them on Jan 6th & far into the future.”

On the afternoon of Jan. 6, the lawyers’ complaint states, Zeldin announced on Twitter that he would formally object to the Electoral College’s determination.” By making that announcement, according to the complaint, “Zeldin not only engaged in dishonest conduct, but also contributed to the incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection.”

On the House floor on Jan. 6, Zeldin spoke in support of objections to the election results in Arizona in a statement he labeled in a Jan. 6 tweet was made “in defense of the republic.” He voted to sustain objections to the election results in both Arizona and Pennsylvania.

His statement and both votes came on Jan. 6 after a large mob of Trump supporters violently attacked the Capitol while Congress was in a joint session to certify the Electoral College, as required by the Constitution.

The mob stormed the Capitol following a 90-minute “Save America” rally in the Ellipse park at which Trump aired his grievances about the election he claimed was stolen by Democrats and “weak” Republicans. Trump urged the crowd to go to the Capitol, where Congress was beginning to count and certify the Electoral College ballots.

The Trump mob stormed the Capitol, breaching barricades, overwhelming Capitol Police, breaking doors and windows and entering the building as lawmakers met in both chambers. The sessions were cut short as the mob could be heard in the corridors. The lawmakers were evacuated and staff members and reporters barricaded themselves in offices.

The chaotic scenes were broadcast live on television and circulated on social media, capturing Trump supporters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” — someone had erected a gallows outside the Capitol during the riot — and searching for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats. Members of the mob broke into offices and into both chambers of Congress.

Zeldin issued a statement that afternoon urging “everyone to please cooperate with the Capitol Police who need to gain control of this situation immediately.” He said the violence being witnessed by America “should never be the scene at the US Capitol” and said there should be “ZERO tolerance for violence in any form!”

The riots resulted in the deaths of five people, including a uniformed Capitol Police officer who was beaten to death by the mob. Scores of other officers were injured, some seriously.

Seven hours later, after the building was secured and the crowd was dispersed, Congress resumed its constitutionally mandated count. Some shaken Republican senators withdrew their support for objections after the riot, which left only two objections supported by senators to be brought to the floor of each chamber for a vote. (Without support in the Senate, there is no vote in either chamber.) A planned objection to Georgia’s results was withdrawn, and no senators signed onto the House’s objection to results in Michigan and Nevada.

“Even after the bloodshed and terror at the Capitol, Rep. Zeldin again asserted his baseless objections to the election results,” the lawyers complaint to the grievance committee states.

“He took to the floor of the House of Representatives, and in a speech riddled with misinformation and misrepresentations, challenged the results of the Arizona and Pennsylvania elections…” the complaint states.“Disregarding the will of the people, Rep. Zeldin sought to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters, which is particularly egregious conduct for an attorney who has been elected to high office and sworn an oath to uphold the constitution,

In a brief interview Monday following a news conference he held in Manorville, Zeldin said he had not heard anything about the complaint and could not comment on it.

Asked if he was willing to state that the 2020 presidential election was a free and fair election and constitutionally valid, Zeldin replied, “This was a free election. And we did go through the entire constitutional process.” That process includes a certification of the Electoral College vote, he said.

“After every Republican presidential win over the last generation, there have been objections that have been followed,” Zeldin said.

“At the end of that constitutional process, the first thing I did was put out a statement that says, regardless of whether you supported President Biden or or President Trump, regardless of your the opinions and passions everyone has, once Congress certifies the results, it’s over,” Zeldin said.

On the evening of Jan. 7, Zeldin issued a statement acknowledging Biden’s election.

“Moving forward, there will be continued debate and there will be disagreement, but out of that must be a healthy, guarded and even thriving republic,” he said in the Jan. 7 statement. “Right now, I am not going to dwell on any doubt, but to recommit to working towards a vigorous defense of lady liberty at all costs, and the pursuit of unity whenever possible,” he said.

The congressman reiterated Monday he still has “an issue with” changes made by executive order or otherwise to the electoral process established by state legislatures.

The lawyers’ complaint was filed with the court in Albany, where Zeldin was admitted to the New York bar in January 2004. The Shirley resident earned his law degree at Albany Law School in 2003.

The lawyers in the complaint urge the New York bar to “send a powerful message to the public that the legal profession is committed to the defense of our democratic institutions and will not tolerate the conduct of attorneys who seek to subvert the will of the people, undermine our elections, and recklessly contribute to the incitement of violence.”

RiverheadLOCAL provided Zeldin’s office with a copy of the complaint Tuesday morning, seeking additional comment from the congressman. Tuesday night, Zeldin spokesperson Katie Vincentz dismissed the complaint as a partisan attack.

“Nearly every single one of these attorneys is a registered Democrat and half have donated to Congressman Zeldin’s opponents,” Vincentz said in an email. “One even ran as a Democrat in the Town of Brookhaven and another was chairman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee for almost 20 years,” she said.

“The eagerness of these partisan Democrats to further divide our community and country is despicable,” Vincentz wrote.

She reiterated Zeldin’s statements Monday that Democrats have raised objections to Electoral College vote counts after the election of Republican presidents.

“It’s an incredible double standard that if Republicans object as well on the same date in the same place as part of the same process, then that makes them all seditious traitors,” Vincentz said.

“Anyone who wants to call out a Congressional Republican for supporting an objection on January 6th needs to put up their past statements calling out every Congressional Democrat who objected in the past,” she said. “If those public calls don’t exist, their calls now are just hyper-partisan and hypocritical nonsense.”

Editor’s note: This article was amended post-publication to add further comment from Rep. Lee Zeldin’s office provided Tuesday night.

Lee Zeldin Must Be Held Accountable

David Posnett — Sun, 24 Jan 2021 22:45:25 +0000

In this weeks Long Island Advance, by Shoshana Hershkowitz

Saw it Coming

David Posnett — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 22:26:05 +0000

By David Friedman, in Smithtown News Jan 14, 2021

Zeldin is Trying to Invalidate Millions of Votes

David Posnett — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 22:20:47 +0000

By David Friedman in Smithtown News 1/7/21