Smartmatic Cries ‘Vindictive and Selective Prosecution’ as DOJ Moves Forward With Bribery Case

 

Voting machine from Smartmatic with ballots being processed at a polling station in Taguig City, Philippines. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Voting machine company Smartmatic is asking a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges brought by the Justice Department, arguing the case represents a “vindictive and selective prosecution.”

The Washington Post reports that the company’s London-based parent firm filed the motion Tuesday in federal court in Miami.

According to its lawyers, the charges are politically motivated by Trump’s continued resentment over the stealing of the 2020 presidential election.

“Since returning to office, President Trump has openly waged a campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies — chief among them those who undermine his mantra that the 2020 election was rigged,” attorneys for the company wrote in their filing.

“Put simply, the charging decision is consistent with an administration that prioritizes targeting its enemies over equal protection under the law,” they added.

The criminal case itself centers on alleged bribery connected to elections in the Philippines, not the United States.

Federal prosecutors charged two Smartmatic executives in 2024 with paying bribes to secure contracts tied to the country’s 2016 election system, yet Biden prosecutors declined to charge the company itself.

Yet, soon after President Trump returned to office, the Justice Department expanded the case and secured an indictment against Smartmatic’s parent company, SGO Corporation Limited, in October.

The indictment includes six counts tied to bribery and money laundering.

“The only consequential changes in this case since 2024 were the President, his DOJ, and their well-documented crusade to unconstitutionally target their perceived political enemies,” attorneys Jenny Kramer and Christopher C. Marquardt wrote.

Although Smartmatic machines were used in only one U.S. jurisdiction during the 2020 election, the company became a flashpoint in the fight for election integrity.

As part of its own campaign of retribution, the company has filed defamation lawsuits against numerous prominent figures and media outlets, including Fox News, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jeanine Pirro.

Smartmatic's board of directors, Peter Neffenger, coincidentally just happened to also be on Joe Biden's transition team and nobody thought that somebody involved in an election company directly involved in U.S. elections, specializing in election machines with backdoors,… pic.twitter.com/VywvSU0nXG

— The SCIF (@TheSCIF) March 9, 2026

The company and its executives have pleaded not guilty to the bribery charges. If the judge allows the prosecution to move forward, the trial is scheduled for 2027.

The Department of Justice has so far declined to comment.

HORROR: Homeless Migrant ‘Randomly’ Shoves 83-Year-Old Veteran Onto NYC Subway Tracks, Leaving American Hero with Life-Threatening Head and Brain Injuries

 

Bairon Hernandez and Richard Williams Credits: NYPD Crime Stoppers and WRBC News screenshot

An American hero in New York City is fighting for his life thanks to a lowlife who had no business being in America to start with.

As The New York Post reported, a homeless migrant from Honduras named Bairon Hernandez was arrested on Tuesday for “randomly shoving” two men onto Upper East Side subway tracks over the weekend. The incident occurred at the Lexington Avenue – 63rd Street station.

Police and witnesses said that Hernandez sneaked up behind the two men and pushed them, and then fled the scene while the pair were stranded helplessly on the tracks. Thankfully, no train arrived at that time.

The two men were later rescued and taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell.

One of the victims was identified as 83-year-old Air Force veteran Richard Williams. According to Williams’ granddaughter, Samantha Loria, he was left with severe head fractures and brain bleeding.

“My grandpa sadly suffered multiple fractures in his body. His brain, he’s bleeding. They can’t stop the bleeding. He hit his head on the train tracks. Thank God, there wasn’t a train coming,” Loria said in a statement obtained by WTOC.

Loria revealed that Williams not only survived a fire but also recently beat cancer. Now, she fears that she will never be able to hug her grandfather again.

“The hardest part is I might not be able to hug him again,” Loria said. “He survived a fire, cancer recently, and all he wanted to do is walk. He loves to walk.”

According to reports, Williams is listed in critical condition and may need a miracle to survive the attack. One of Williams’ daughters told The New York Post that he is on a respirator at the hospital.

Williams, though, would not have had any chance at all for survival without the help of the second victim, 30-year-old Jhon Rodriguez.

He explained to CBS New York that despite his own injuries and feeling “disoriented”, he managed to pick Williams off the track with another individual assisting him.

They all made it to the platform before a train arrived.

From CBS New York:

The younger victim, Jhon Rodriguez, told CBS News New York that he captured video of the suspect who pushed him and Williams down to the tracks.

Rodriguez said Williams hit his head, started bleeding, and lost consciousness. Panicked and injured, himself, Rodriguez said he picked Williams up off the tracks and with the help of another man they both made it onto the platform before the next train arrived.

“I felt really scared. I was trembling. I felt disoriented,” Rodriguez said, speaking in Spanish.

Hernandez has been charged with attempted murder, attempted assault, assault, and reckless endangerment. Unsurprisingly, he has denied the allegations.

Another Illegal Immigrant Loophole Could Get A Rude Awakening

 Missouri lawmakers are moving to crack down on international money transfers by illegal immigrants following the massive welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota that has drawn national attention in recent weeks.

The legislation, backed by Missouri Treasurer Vivek Malek, would require money transmitters operating in Missouri to verify that individuals sending money overseas are lawfully present in the United States before processing international remittances. The Missouri legislation is part of a broader push by conservative state officials to strengthen safeguards around public spending following high-profile fraud cases uncovered during the pandemic.

The proposal, introduced as HB 2412 and SB 1124 in the Missouri General Assembly, would make Missouri the first state in the nation to require verification of lawful presence before international remittances can be processed.

“The failures in Minnesota offer a lesson to other states,” Malek said in a statement obtained exclusively by The Daily Wire. “We are taking sensible action in Missouri to prevent similar crime from occurring here. American dollars should stay in America.”

The push comes after the massive welfare fraud scheme scandal in Minnesota, which involved Somali-linked fraud networks allegedly siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars from federally funded child nutrition programs during the COVID era. The scandal, which has led to dozens of indictments, triggered a wave of scrutiny from lawmakers and watchdog groups who say weak oversight allowed the scheme to flourish for years.

Malek, a member of the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), said the Missouri legislation is intended to close potential loopholes that could allow fraudulently obtained taxpayer funds to be moved overseas.

Critics of the proposal argue that the legislation could harm immigrant communities that rely on remittances to support family members abroad. One recent local news report highlighted an illegal immigrant who has lived in the United States for more than a decade and sends roughly half of his income overseas. “I’m here alone fighting for life, to maintain my family over there. I’ve been here for 13 years,” he said anonymously.

Carlos Rich, president of the Rural Community Workers Alliance — an organization which is “a worker-led organization dedicated to empowering, educating, and organizing refugee and immigrant workers,” — predicts that 5,000 immigrants in the area would be affected by this bill.

Supporters of the measure argue that the issue is not legal immigration or legitimate remittances, but preventing taxpayer-funded fraud schemes from funneling money out of the country. The State Financial Officers Foundation recently released a report estimating that Republican state financial officers collectively protected more than $28 billion in taxpayer funds from fraud and waste last year through oversight initiatives and financial reforms.

At the time of the report, Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks and SFOF National Chairman said, “across the country, state financial officers are doing the job taxpayers expect, identifying billions in waste, fraud, and abuse, generating strong investment results, and returning billions in unclaimed property to rightful owners.”

To the critics of the harder approach, Oaks added that it’s “not partisan; it’s fiduciary duty. America’s state financial officers will continue to expose fiscal misconduct and protect the hard-earned dollars of the American people.”

While lawmakers in several states have proposed new oversight measures after the Minnesota scandal, Missouri’s proposal to regulate international remittances would be the first of its kind if enacted.

CNN Hit With One-Two Punch In Single Day Over ISIS Bomb Plot Coverage

 If you’re looking for a case study in how the mainstream media constructs a narrative out of thin air to protect their preferred ideological allies, look no further than CNN’s recent coverage of an attempted IED attack in New York City.

On Tuesday night, Abby Phillip and Ana Navarro didn’t just report the news; they performed a masterclass in obfuscation, deliberately mischaracterizing a terrorist act to frame it as a story of Muslim victimhood.

The facts, which CNN seemingly finds inconvenient, are these: two Pennsylvania teenagers, who reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS, traveled to New York to detonate homemade bombs. Their target wasn’t a person, but a crowd of protesters. Yet, in the hands of Abby Phillip, this became an “attempted terror attack against New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani.”

By framing the attack as one directed at Mamdani — who identifies as Muslim — Phillip and Navarro attempted to pivot the conversation away from radical Islamic terrorism and toward their favorite hobby horse: Republican “bigotry.” Phillip used the false premise of an attack on Mamdani to grill guests about comments made by GOP Congressmen Andy Ogles and Randy Fine, effectively using a near-tragedy caused by ISIS sympathizers to scold Republicans for being mean.

Ana Navarro, never one to let a factual error get in the way of a partisan jab, doubled down on the lie. After she declared, “What I find ironic is, so supposedly some of these comments are as a result of the attempt against Mayor Mamdani in New York,” Republican Joe Borelli correctly pointed out that the attackers were targeting protesters, not Mamdani.

Navarro stubbornly insisted, “It was at his house,” as if proximity to a building constitutes a targeted assassination attempt. The goal was transparent: if they could convince the audience that Mamdani was the target, they could claim that any criticism of radicalism is actually an incitement to violence against Muslim officials.

Phillip offered an apology on Wednesday morning:

This gaslighting followed a humiliating retreat by CNN earlier that day. The network had deleted a tweet that described the terrorists as “Pennsylvania teenagers” whose “lives would drastically change” after a “normal day” ended in arrests for throwing bombs. It was a pathetic attempt to infantilize ISIS-pledging terrorists, portraying them as wayward youths who stumbled into a felony.

Phillip and Navarro’s performance was a cynical attempt to gain sympathy for Mamdani by painting him as a target of the very radicalism the media spent all morning trying to downplay. It is a perfect circle of media dishonesty: first, humanize the terrorists; then, when that fails, lie about the target to cast your political opponents as the real villains.

US CENTCOM Releases Footage and Images of Strikes in Iran as Hegseth Forecasts “Most Intense Day of Strikes Inside Iran” with Lowest Iranian Missile Capabilities to Date (VIDEO)

 

US CENTCOM strikes Iranian missile launchers

US Central Command released images from recent US military operations in Iran, which War Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on Tuesday are becoming increasingly more intense, with more planes, bombs, and personnel executing operations. 

On Monday, CENTCOM posted photos from nighttime operations in Iran on X, writing, “Day and NIGHT, U.S. forces continue to deliver overwhelming firepower.”

US CENTCOM releases photos from Iran operations

Day and NIGHT, U.S. forces continue to deliver overwhelming firepower. pic.twitter.com/TGx0ujatMh

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 10, 2026

CENTCOM also released footage from strikes on Iranian missile launchers that Iran attempted to hide under cover on Monday.

“The Iranian regime can try to hide their missile launchers, but U.S. forces won’t stop looking. When we find them, we’re taking them out,” CENTCOM wrote on X.

Another clip shows additional sites with what appear to be mobile missile launchers being vaporized by US strikes.

During a press briefing on Tuesday morning, War Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that today would be the “most intense day of strikes inside Iran,” with “the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever.” Meanwhile, he said, Iran has fired in the last 24 hours “the lowest number of missiles they’ve been capable of firing yet.”

“You see, this is not 2003; this is not endless nation-building under those types of quagmires we saw under Bush or Obama. It’s not even close,” he added. “Those days are dead. Instead, we’re winning decisively with brutal efficiency, total air dominance, and an unbreakable will to accomplish the President’s objectives on our timeline.”

WATCH:

Hegseth: Today will be yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran. The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever. So, that’s on one hand. On the other hand, the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest number of missiles they’ve been capable of firing yet. Just the bifurcation, just the trend lines that we talked about on our first briefing.

You see, this is not 2003; this is not endless nation-building under those types of quagmires we saw under Bush or Obama. It’s not even close. Our generation of soldier will not let that happen again, and nor will this president, who very clearly ran against those kinds of never-ending, nebulously scoped missions. Those days are dead. Instead, we’re winning decisively with brutal efficiency, total air dominance and an unbreakable will to accomplish the President’s objectives on our timeline. We stay locked on the target because here at the Department of War, that’s our job.

 US B-52 Bombers arrived in the UK after Hegseth and Caine announced last week plans to expand inland into Iranian territory to bring “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer finally caved to Trump’s pressure and allowed the US to use UK airbases to attack Iran after initially refusing.