[Updated below with details on the second part of Jacobson's series, just posted at RAW STORY, in which he ties together Hunter's EAC appointment and dubious tenure, representing the RNC's nefarious "voter fraud" fraudster wing (which is to say, pretty much the entire RNC these days!) The second in the series offers important info and a good reminder of the names you'll be seeing again soon, singing the same old phony, discredited "voter fraud" songs once again as November nears, as sure as the sun rises in the East.]

Brad Jacobson has filed the first in a series of exclusives at RAW STORY concerning GOP operative and Bush-appointed FEC commissioner Caroline Hunter. [Disclosure: Jacobson has blogged at The BRAD BLOG in the past.] Here's the lede for his first excellent investigative report yesterday:

The report goes on to detail how Hunter --- who, as The BRAD BLOG has highlighted over the years, had previously been allowed to serve as a commissioner on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) --- deceptively misrepresented the facts, on behalf of the RNC, in a 2004 voter caging hearing in federal court.

Jacobson quotes election law experts, including two long-time former DoJ Voting Section attorneys, who argue that while the way she couched her sworn testimony may "shield her from perjury charges," the statements she gave may "still pose ethical problems that potentially could result in her disbarment."...

Simon Worrall's piece from February's Maxim on the mysterious death of Bush/Rove/GOP IT guru Mike Connell is now available online.

As we noted in our detailed exclusive preview of the piece last month, the 3,500-word exposè by the British author and journalist is the closest thing to mainstream corporate media coverage that this story has received since Connell's death. Worrall offers a number of tantalizing facts and fresh interviews about the man whose companies and computers and websites were said to have been near the center of (among other under-investigated crimes) the alleged gaming of the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio. He has also been posting a series of short "Back Story" pieces on this feature article over on his own blog that you may find interesting as well.

Connell died when the single-engine aircraft he was piloting just prior to Christmas 2008 crashed in flames near Akron. The tragedy came just weeks after he was compelled by a federal judge to give a deposition in a long-standing 2004 federal election fraud lawsuit, on the heels of reports that Connell had been threatened by Rove to "take the fall" for whatever happened in '04. After Worrall's year-long investigation, he believes it's highly likely that Connell was, in fact, murdered.

The BRAD BLOG earned 2010 Project Censored award for "Excellence in Investigative Journalism" for our own coverage of the Connell story. Highlights of that coverage are linked below. (And P.S.: Our own feature article on the formerly-gagged FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, in the March issue of Hustler, is still currently on the stands!)...

The story for which The BRAD BLOG was awarded a 2010 Project Censored award for "Excellence in Investigative Journalism" is "censored" no more. From the February 2010 issue of Maxim hitting mag racks this week...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has won a substantive victory on behalf of the voters of Ohio --- perhaps hundreds of thousands of them --- via a court case filed in 2006, challenging a number of voter suppression tactics employed by the state's then Sec. of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell (R).

The victory may lead to the enfranchisement of "hundreds of thousands of voting-eligible low-income Ohioans" according to one of the attorneys involved in the case, yet it looks like Fox "News", Matt Drudge, and all of the other Rightwingers may have forgotten to post a thank you note to ACORN this week for their successful battle to strengthen the growth of democracy in the U.S....

Guest Blogged by Rebecca M. Abrahams

On December 18, 2008, Bush IT expert Mike Connell, a highly skilled pilot, was killed in a sudden crash while flying his small aircraft from Washington DC to his Akron/Canton home airport. The cause of the crash is still unknown and under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

For more than ten months, Connell's family has been coping with feelings of disbelief, anger and confusion and has many unanswered questions about the man they knew and loved.

For Connell's widow Heather, holding her husband's New Media consulting firm together is a daily struggle.

"The more I learn about the crash the more sick it makes me - the destruction of the plane. I found a pack of the I-pod ear buds in a tree. I'm obsessed with the Blackberry. I don't have the Blackberry. I have his backpack. I have his paperwork, his schedule. None of his paperwork is burned up. One of his prayer books burned on the outside. I think there was a lot thrown from the plane."

Although mainly un-reported, there's a great deal of controversy surrounding Connell's death - largely in part because he was the architect of many Republican websites including GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com, the site Karl Rove used for 95% of his email correspondence. Connell was also considered a key witness in the election fraud lawsuit King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell. The suit implicates Former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell, Karl Rove and others of 2004 election night vote rigging.

Attorneys in the case believe that Connell, who had not been accused of any wrongdoing, had firsthand knowledge about the missing White House emails and Rove's alleged wrongdoing with respect to the 2004 Presidential election.

His wife, and those attorneys, are not the only ones still focused on questions about what actually happened to Mike Connell nearly one year ago, and in the years prior...

We're watching results as they're coming in tonight, while continuing to comb through various problem reports as they've been coming in throughout the day (the usual "hiccups" "glitches" "snags" and "snafus" reportage --- anything but the proper word for them all: "failure"!)

As we always find necessary to remind readers on such nights, the bulk of election failures tend to reveal themselves in the hours and days --- and sometimes even weeks --- after Election Day.

With that in mind, of the most potential note that we've seen so far today --- though mostly downplayed as minor "glitches" in most of the stories reporting them --- we've found reports of: Diebold touch-screen machine failure in OH's Montgomery and Greene Counties; new e-pollbooks failing in Suffolk County, NY; new Sequoia/Dominion optical-scan systems failing in St. Lawrence County, NY, and; Sequoia touch-screen failures in Essex, Somerset and Goucester Counties, NJ.

Fortunately, turnout has been light today, so the problems that have cropped up seem to have been handled by quickly replacing machines (a luxury available during slow, off-year elections when there are extra machines to go around) or in such a way that delays --- and the voter disenfranchisement that goes with them --- were minimal. At least as so far reported.

Whether any of the results tabulated in secret, with secret software, are actually accurate, well, that's anyone's guess as usual. In any case, we're monitoring, and will let ya know if there's anything you need to know about. Please feel free to let us know about anything you think we should know about in comments.

Other than that, we're just stunned that ACORN did such a terrible job, yet again, at "stealing the election" in New Jersey!

UPDATE 9:29pm PT: New Sequoia op-scan systems fail in Fulton County, NY and are impounded by court order. Emergency paper ballots are used. Fulton is part of the hotly contested NY-23 Congressional special election.

For various reasons, now seems a good moment to mention that The BRAD BLOG was honored this year with a prestigious Project Censored 2010 award for our coverage of the mysterious death of the GOP's IT guru Mike Connell. Connell, for those unfamiliar with the story (see background links at bottom of this article) was in the process of testifying about his rumored role in helping the GOP carry out fraud in Ohio's '04 Presidential Election when he was then reportedly threatened by Karl Rove. Weeks later he suddenly plunged to his death in a single-engine plane crash just before Christmas last year as he was preparing to land near Akron, on his way home from one of his frequent trips to D.C..

My colleagues Mark Crispin Miller and Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane were also honored by PC for their own coverage of the story.

Project Censored, based out of Sonoma State University, has been highlighting overlooked stories each year since 1976, and was recognized by Walter Cronkite as "one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured our newspaper and our broadcasting outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism."

In addition to our "Excellence in Investigative Journalism" award from PC this year, as highlighted in their annual "Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010," I was also asked to write a chapter on problems faced by voters in Election 2008 for this year's book, Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-09.

Co-Editors Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff have been kind enough to offer us a number of signed copies at a reduced rate so that we can offer them as premiums to readers of The BRAD BLOG to help continue our work here.

The 9,000 word chapter I wrote for the book is titled "Election 2008: Vanishing Votes, Disappearing Democracy and Media Misdirection" and includes sections named "And You Lose Your Vote! And You Lose Your Vote! And You Lose Your Vote!..."; "First Worst in the Nation"; "America Flips Out, Media Barely Notices, Parties Barely Care"; "Democrats Nowhere to be Found"; and "Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain."

If you'd like a copy of this great book (Makes a great holiday gift! I'll sign it as well, if you wish!), chocked full of important, overlooked stories from the last year or so, along with follow-ups to them --- and a lot of real information on the story of Election 2008 seen here for the first time in print --- please do one of the following:

• Donate $50 or more to The BRAD BLOG
• Alternately (and even preferably!) sign up for a monthly sustaining donation of $15 or more in the blue box in the right sidebar on this page, or
• Send a check for $50 or more via snail mail, (note when sending that it's for "Censored 2010"), to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028

Your support is greatly appreciated, and tremendously needed, as we receive no foundational or corporate support for our work here! Your contributions are largely the only thing that keep us going! So thank you in advance for any help here!

Links to The BRAD BLOG's most recent coverage of the Mike Connell story follows below...

The Schmidt v. Krikorian hearing is continuing today before the Ohio Election Commission. This is the case which resulted in FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' stunning sworn deposition in early August, and in "high drama" on the first day of proceedings early last month.

I'll be off the grid for much of today, so allow me to refer to today's live tweeting by Cincinnati Enquirer's Jon Craig, and to Geoffrey "Ohiobama" Sea's live blogging over at Daily Kos. Both come straight from the courtroom as the, apparently equally contentious, second day continues.

There was discussion, after the first day ended last month, of Edmonds testifying in person; she is not currently scheduled to do so, though Krikorian says her deposition transcript and video will be submitted nonetheless. And as Craig's tweets suggest, this thing may go to a third day, in any case.

More later as I'm able to get back and pay attention. For more background on the case for now, see the stories in our Jean Schmidt category...

UPDATE 10/2/09: Here's an excellent, if Armenian-leaning summary/report on the case by Peter Musurlian of Horizon TV, following the September 3rd hearing (in advance of the second day continuation yesterday), including some shoving in the elevator outside the hearing room, for which the filmmaker is said to be considering a lawsuit, a "screw you" comment from Schmidt's Chief of Staff, Barry Bennet, and some forgetful testimony from Schmidt who had twice been found in "reckless disregard for the truth" by the same commission, for having lied about receiving a second college degree:

FURTHER UPDATE 10/2/09: The decisions of the Ohio Election commission are now in, including the decision to allow portions of Edmonds' sworn deposition to be submitted into evidence in the hearing. These are the final updates from Sea's live blogging at dKos yesterday from within the hearing room (his earlier updates are also well worth the read, as it sounds like it was quite a day in that room!)...

The Cincinnati Enquirer's Jon Craig is live tweeting the Schmidt v. Krikorian hearing going on today before the Ohio Election Commission, for those of you interested in the actual case that resulted in the stunning --- though MSM-ignored --- deposition of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. He writes to let us know both that, and that it's running longer than expected today...

UPDATE: Noteworthy tweet, as tensions reportedly running very high in hearing:

...and prior to that:

...and before that:

...though Craig notes AP and other local media are there.

UPDATE 1:46pm PT: Also, Geoffrey Sea, is live blogging the hearing as "Ohiobama" at dKos. An early report of his, on attorney Mark Geragos' defense of Krikorian who is facing "false statements" charges alleged by Jean Schmidt (R-OH-2nd) after he'd claimed last year she accepted "blood money" from Turkish interests:

...and in a later update, with Schmidt on the stand, Sea notes:

UPDATE 3:02pm PT: As hearing was running very long, Krikorian team asked for a continuance to another day. Craig tweets "Hearing is being continued to Oct. 1."

Well, well. As The BRAD BLOG reported previously, Sibel Edmonds will be back in the country by then, and likely able to testify LIVE on the stand, if the Commission allows it. Krikorian wanted her to do so originally --- and she was willing to do so as well --- but she was gone, and the Commission refused to extend original hearing date. Now, this could get very interesting...

UPDATE 7:16pm PT: In response to an email query about testifying in the case, if called, Edmonds wrote back to us tonight:

ALSO: Jon Craig's full coverage of today's hearings, for tomorrow's Cincinnati Enquirer, is now published here... (And he even dares to use the words "Sibel Edmonds" in the article! Shocking.)

A couple of quick updates, and a few notable developments in the status of the Ohio Election Commission (OEC) case between the Republican 2nd-District U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt and her independent '08 (and now, Democratic '10 ) challenger David Krikorian.

This is the case which resulted in the recent stunning deposition of FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, as Schmidt has alleged "false statements" by Krikorian when he claimed that she accepted "blood money" from the Turkish Lobby in exchange for opposing a Congressional vote on the "Armenian Genocide" resolution. He says her campaign received more money from that lobby than any other member last year, after which she became the co-chair of the Congressional Turkish Coalition. That, despite the paucity of any actual ethnic Turks in her district.

Krikorian offered a few interesting status updates on the case to The BRAD BLOG, late last week during a phone conversation...

Just over two weeks ago, FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was finally allowed to speak about much of what the Bush Administration spent years trying to keep her from discussing publicly on the record. Twice gagged by the Bush Dept. of Justice's invocation of the so-called "State Secrets Privilege," Edmonds has been attempting to tell her story, about the crimes she became aware of while working for the FBI, for years.

Thanks to a subpoena issued by the campaign of Ohio's 2nd District Democratic U.S. Congressional candidate David Krikorian, her remarkable allegations of blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, and criminal conspiracy by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials, and agents of the government of Turkey are seen and heard here, in full, for the first time, in her under-oath deposition. Both the complete video tape and transcript of the deposition follow below.

Though there was much concern, prior to her testimony, that the Obama Dept. of Justice might re-invoke the "State Secrets Privilege" to keep her from speaking, they did not do so. Nor did they choose to be present at the Washington D.C. deposition.

The BRAD BLOG covered details of some of Edmonds' startling disclosures made during the deposition, as it happened, in our live blog coverage from August 8th. The deposition included criminal allegations against specifically named members of Congress. Among those named by Edmonds as part of a broad criminal conspiracy: Reps. Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Dan Burton (R-IN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Bob Livingston (R-LA), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), Tom Lantos (D-CA), as well as an unnamed, still-serving Congresswoman (D) said to have been secretly videotaped, for blackmail purposes, during a lesbian affair.

High-ranking officials from the Bush Administration named in her testimony, as part of the criminal conspiracy on behalf of agents of the Government of Turkey, include Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossman, and others.

During the deposition --- which we are still going through ourselves --- Edmonds discusses covert "activities" by Turkish entities "that would involve trying to obtain very sensitive, classified, highly classified U.S. intelligence information, weapons technology information, classified Congressional records...recruiting key U.S. individuals with access to highly sensitive information, blackmailing, bribery."

Speaking about current members of Congress during a break in the testimony, Krikorian told The BRAD BLOG that "for people in power situations in the United States, who know about this information, if they don't take action against it, in my opinion, it's negligence." (More video statements from Krikorian, Edmonds and attorneys from all parties, taped before, during, and after the 8/8/09 testimony, are available here.)

Edmonds' on-the-record disclosures also include bombshell details concerning outed covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's front company, Brewster Jennings. Edmonds alleges the front company had actually been shut down in August of 2001 --- three years prior to Bob Novak's public disclosure of the covert operative's identity --- following a tip-off to a wire-tap target about the true nature of the CIA front company. The cover was blown, Edmonds alleges, by Marc Grossman, who was, at the time, the third highest-ranking official in the U.S. State Department. Prior to that, Grossman served as ambassador to Turkey. He now works "for a Turkish company called Ihals Holding," according to Edmonds' testimony.

An unclassified FBI Inspector General's report, released on her case in 2005, declared Edmonds' classified allegations to be "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI." In 2002, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), then the senior members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, co-wrote letters on Edmonds' behalf to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and DoJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, calling on all of them to take action in respect to her allegations. And in a 2002 60 Minutes report on Edmonds' case, Grassley noted: "Absolutely, she's credible...And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."

The 8/8/09 deposition was brought by Krikorian as part of his defense in a case filed against him before the Ohio Election Commission (OEC) by Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH). The 2nd district Congresswoman has accused Krikorian, an Armenian-American who ran against her as an independent in 2008, of "false statements" during the campaign last year alleging that she had accepted "blood money" from Turkish interests. Krikorian says that Schmidt, co-chair of the Congressional Turkish Committee, accepted more money from Turkish interests during last year's campaign than any other member of Congress, despite few, if any, ethnic Turks among her local constituency. He has suggested she may have been instrumental in helping to hold off a Congressional vote on a long-proposed, much-disputed resolution declaring the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians during WWI as a "genocide" by the Turks.

Edmonds herself happens to be a Turkish-American, though she was recently attacked by the Turkish Lobby, following her long-sought, long-blocked testimony.

The complete transcript of Sibel Edmonds' under-oath testimony, may now be downloaded here [PDF]. The complete video-taped testimony follows, in five parts, below...

Claiming that Ohio's Republican U.S. House Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-2nd) is "conced[ing] that she does deny the Armenian Genocide," the campaign of her Democratic challenger David Krikorian has just issued a press release (posted in full below), stating that Schmidt has dropped four of her "false statements" complaints against him in her Ohio Election Commission (OEC) case, while petitioning the court to add a new claim in the bargain.

The news comes on the heels of last Saturday's deposition by the FBI's former Turkish-American translator Sibel Edmonds who had been subpoenaed last week to testify in the case. The whistleblower had been previous-gagged by two different assertions of the "state secrets" privilege during the Bush Administration. She was finally able to testify on Saturday, under oath, about alleged infiltration, bribery, and blackmail by Turkish agents, of current and former members of the U.S. Congress and other high ranking officials in the Departments of State and Defense. The BRAD BLOG covered the stunning deposition as it happened last Saturday.

Schmidt had challenged Krikorian's claim, during his 2008 independent campaign against her, that she accepted "blood money" from Turkish agents in exchange for helping to block a Congressional resolution recognizing the 1915 killing of some 1.5 million ethnic Armenians as a genocide....

In a rather extraordinary unbylined blog item posted on Wednesday, the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA) has launched what appears to be an all-out assault on FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her remarkable, long-awaited under-oath deposition taken over the weekend in the Ohio Election Commission (OEC)'s Schmidt v. Krikorian case.

Called as a witness for David Krikorian (who is Armenian-American), Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH)'s opponent in 2008 and 2010, Edmonds (who is Turkish-American) testified to infiltration, bribery, corruption, and blackmail within the U.S. Government, by current and former members of the U.S. House and other high ranking officials, on behalf of Turkish interests. Schmidt, the co-chair of the Congressional Turkish Caucus has filed a complaint with the OEC alleging "false statements" by Krikorian during their 2008 contest when he had alleged she had taken "blood money" from those opposed to a Congressional declaration of Armenian Genocide by the Turks during WWI. Schmidt is also said to have taken more money from Turkish interests during the 2008 campaign than any other House candidate.

The TCA seems to have "declared war," according to Edmonds who touched base from out of the country via email on Wednesday. The scathing blog post alleges Edmonds' testimony was "a full-on assault against the national interests of the United States and the integrity of its justice system by the Armenian lobby"; says "Krikorian and his lobbyist backers are getting desperate"; and otherwise attempts to disparage Edmonds' character by describing her as "self-aggrandizing," and a "disgruntled and discredited former federal employee."

The report offers no evidence to support any of its allegations against Krikorian, Edmonds or "the Armenian Lobby." Many of the claims, particularly those concerning Edmonds, are directly contradicted by official reports from the FBI Inspector General's office, as well as senior, bi-partisan members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee...

As we continue to wait for the release of the video/transcript of long-gagged FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' deposition last Saturday, the campaign of David Krikorian, Ohio's Democratic candidate for the U.S. House seat in the 2nd Congressional district, has just issued a press release relating to it. (Complete release posted below.)

In the statement, they re-iterate some of the information which The BRAD BLOG covered during our live-blogging of the event over the weekend, including Edmonds' allegations under oath that "the Turkish Lobby in the United States was under the direction of the Turkish Government and engaged in operations including bribery, espionage and blackmail with certain members of the US House of Representatives to further its objectives in the United States including one of which is the denial of the Armenian Genocide."

Some of those current and former House reps, such as Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Dan Burton (R-IL), Bob Livingston (R-LA), Dick Gephardt (D-MO), and Stephen Solarz (D-NY), were said to have been specifically named during the 5-hour-long deposition. One female Representative, said to be a Democrat and still serving in the House, was described, but not named, as having been "hooked" by Turkish agents into participating in a lesbian affair which is said to have been videotaped for potential blackmail use against the sitting Congresswoman....

Thanks to VelvetRevolution.us [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder], here are some of the greatly condensed highlights from outside the National Whistleblowers Center on Saturday in D.C., as FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds gave her long-awaited under-oath deposition.

Long gagged under the "state secrets" privilege by the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration's DoJ chose not to re-invoke privilege, paving the way for this information to finally make its way on to the unclassified public record.

Selected public commentary from the attorneys, candidate David Krikorian, and Edmonds, taken before, during breaks, and after the testimony follows. For many many more details, quotes and information about the information disclosed at the deposition, see our Live-Blog coverage from Saturday here...

(The video of the deposition itself is still forthcoming. Monday earliest, so we're told, but no way of knowing anything for sure until it's actually made available. There's some 5 or 6 hours of tape, as we understand it. We hope the text transcript of the entire deposition will also be made available to the public soon as well. Edmonds has stated that she too shares both of those hopes. Until then, however, please do review our coverage from yesterday, for the complete, stunning details of what went on yesterday.)

UPDATE 8/10/09, 3:45am PT: Erik Larson, who was also among the independent media outside the NWC on Saturday, has additional coverage and lengthier video clips here...

UPDATE 8/10/09, 2:11pm PT: Quick update on current release status of deposition video/transcript now here...