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Goldman Sachs fined $2.9 billion over role in 1MDB corruption case – WSWS

Goldman Sachs has been fined $2.9 billion by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in a deal announced yesterday that closes one of the biggest corruption cases in the history of Wall Street.

Together with a settlement reached with Malaysian authorities in July, Goldman Sachs will pay more than $5 billion for its involvement in the 1MDB scandal.

While the amounts are large, the settlement follows the pattern of earlier deals on corruption. In return for an agreement to pay fines out of corporate revenue, the company and its executives escape prosecution for criminal activity. The financial penalties are simply written off as a cost of making profit.

Besides avoiding prosecution, Goldman will also escape the appointment of a government monitor to oversee its compliance department which had earlier been put forward by officials involved in pursuing the case.

While the financial penalties amount to around two-thirds of its annual profits, Goldman had already taken them into account, as they had been mooted for some time. Company shares actually rose by more than 1 percent after a report earlier this week by Wall Street Journal about the expected action by the DoJ.

Following the DoJ announcement, the banks share price barely moved. This is already priced in. The stock price is already reflecting this kind of action, Sumit Agarwal, finance professor at Singapores National University told the Financial Times.

Goldmans involvement with 1MDB was in response to the situation it confronted in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008, as its earnings prospects in the US declined and it went in search of profitable opportunities. The Malaysian government had launched the 1MDB fund, supposedly to finance infrastructure development. Goldman stepped forward to organise the sale of $6.5 billion in bonds, with the aim of collecting large fees, in 2012 and 2013.

The whole operation saw the development of a vast corruption ring. According to the prosecution, around $2.7 billion was stolen from 1MDB and more than $1.6 billion was paid out in bribes.

Much of the money was stolen by an adviser to the fund, businessman Jho Low, who was aided by two Goldman bankers working for its Malaysian subsidiary as well as associates in the Malaysian government. It is claimed that the former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, now serving a 12-year jail term, received $700 million.

The DoJ said Goldman had played a central role in the looting of 1MDB and should have detected warning signs. The acting head of the DoJs criminal division, Brian Rabbitt, said: Personnel at the bank allowed this scheme to proceed by overlooking or ignoring a number of clear red flags.

The attempts to claim that one of the largest corruption operations in history was a matter of oversight simply does not pass muster. In court yesterday, Karen Seymour, Goldmans senior counsel, admitted its Malaysian subsidiary had paid bribes in order to obtain and retain business for Goldman Sachs.

According to court papers, when an employee told an unnamed senior executive he was concerned that a 1MDB deal was being delayed because one of the participants was seeking a bribe, he was told: Whats disturbing about that? Its nothing new, is it?

The deals were organised by two Goldman bankers, Timothy Leissner and Roger Ng. Leissner, the former head of Goldmans Southeast Asian business, pleaded guilty to his role in the 1MDB case in 2018. He received more than $200 million from 1MDB and paid bribes to government officials.

Goldman chief executive David Solomon, who took over from Lloyd Blankfeinauthor of the infamous comment in 2009 that big profits for banks meant they were doing Gods worksaid: We recognise that we did not adequately address red flags and scrutinise the representations of certain members of the deal team.

As details of the corruption began to emerge, Goldman sought to blame its involvement on rogue operators. In fact, their activities were encouraged. According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the 1MDB bond deals organised in 2012, won one of Goldmans most prestigious internal awards, praised for its spirit of creativity and entrepreneurial thinking.

In an effort to clean up its image, Goldman announced that four senior executives, including CEO Solomon, would forfeit $31 million in pay this year, and that it would attempt to claw back bonuses paid to Blankfein in the past. But the penalty imposed on current executives amounts only to about one-third of what they were paid in 2019.

The notion that Goldman was somehow the victim of rogue activity and that its involvement in massive corruption is simply the result of oversight is belied by its history, in particular, the role it played in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008.

The Senate investigation into the crisis, which found that the financial system was a snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing, singled out Goldman for special mention.

In 2006, Goldman determined that subprime mortgage assets it was selling to clients were destined to flounder. Goldman went short in the market in the expectation that it would crash and it would make a profit on the other side of the very trades it had been promoting. The sums were not small. At one point the firm held short positions amounting to $13 billion.

In an email, referring to an unsuspecting investor, a Goldman executive wrote: I think I found a white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once.

But the exposure of criminal activity did not bring any prosecutions, let alone jail terms, merely fines, which Goldman and others simply wrote off. In 2013, President Obamas attorney-general, Eric Holder, clearly recognising the extent of the malfeasance, said that prosecutions would impact on the stability of the US and global banking system.

Since 2008, notwithstanding claims by authorities that there would be a clamp down, the corrupt practices have extended, of which Goldmans involvement in 1MDB is only one expression.

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Last month, documents published by BuzzFeed News from the US Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, showed that between 1999 and 2017, major banks has been involved in financial transactions of $2 trillion flagged as potentially involving money laundering. The banks involved were some of the biggest in the world including JP Morgan, HSBC and Standard Charter Bank.

Earlier this month, JPMorgan Chase was fined $920 million over spoofing activity involving the quick placing and withdrawal of buy and sell orders to create the impression there was a surge of activity around a particular financial asset in order to create a profitable opportunity.

According to one of the lead investigators in the case, a significant number of JP Morgan traders and sales personnel openly disregarded US laws that serve to prevent illegal activity in the marketplace.

But despite the fact that the practice was not only well known but was actively promoted, no one in the upper echelons was prosecuted, and the fine has been written off as an operating expense.

The issue which clearly arises is: what is the underlying cause of this system of corruption and illegality?

Commenting on the latest Goldman case, Seth DuCharme, the acting US attorney in Brooklyn, might have gone further than he intended when he remarked: This case is about the way our American financial institutions conduct business.

It certainly is. However, it would be wrong to simply ascribe it to the greed of the financial executives and others, and thereby able to be countered through tighter regulations.

Of course the greed of executives and others exists in abundance. But their activities are, in the final analysis, the expression of processes rooted at the very heart of the profit systemthey are the personification of objective tendencies.

While the aim and driving force of the capitalist system is the accumulation of profit the mode of accumulation has undergone profound changes, above all in the US. No longer is the chief source of profit investment and production in the real economy.

It occurs through operations in the financial system based on speculation, clever trades, the securing of fees for the passage of money (without questioning its source) and where the value of assets is determined by arcane algorithms and other forms of financial engineering.

Consequently, in conditions where profits are increasingly divorced from the underlying real economy, lies, deception, misinformation, corruption and criminality come to dominate the entire financial system.

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Goldman Sachs fined $2.9 billion over role in 1MDB corruption case - WSWS

Weaponizing the Federal Government – Church Militant

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President Trump lambasted New York governor AndrewCuomo in a tweet mid-August, saying, "A horrible Governor. Crime is taking over NYC & State, everyone is leaving. He is after the NRA. ... Cuomo killed 11,000 people in nursing homes alone. Crooked & Incompetent!"

In 2019, Cuomo signed into law radical pro-abortion legislation.

Cuomo forced New York City to celebrate the extreme law by lighting pink One World Trade Center and other New York landmarks.

While many Trump-haters compare the president to Hitler and the Nazis, Orthodox Jews recently flipped the comparison on Cuomo for the governor's restrictions on religious gatherings.

How Cuomo would act as attorney general can likely be predicted by reviewing attorneygeneralsunder Barack Obama,when Biden was vice president.

Obama first picked his personal friend Eric Holder, who became the first attorney general in American history to be held in criminal contempt by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Holder had failed to release Justice Department (DOJ) documents related to Operation Fast and Furious an effort to trace guns, possibly resulting in the death of border patrol agent Brian Terry.

Under Obama, the White House and DOJ decided Holder would not face criminal prosecution for the citation.

Holder alsosigned offon more government surveillance of phone and internet communication in the "war on terror."

Eric Holder: "Michelle [Obama] always says, you know, 'When they go low, we go high.' No, no. When they go low, we kick 'em."

Holder resigned in 2014.

Obama picked Loretta Lynch to replace him.

Taking office on April 27, 2015, Lynch, in the last year of hertenure, was intertwined with the Hillary Clinton email scandal.

Lynch had met privately with Bill Clinton but refused to disclose to Congress any details of their conversation.

At the time, Trump said of the private meeting, "It was really something that they didn't want publicized, as I understand it."

And Cuomo and Biden might share some knowledge they might not want publicized.

Andrew Cuomo: "I could now launch into a whole series of stories about fathers and sons and comparisons and ... but that would get us all into trouble so, I'm gonna stay away from that."

With a man like Cuomo, Biden as vice president might be tame compared to a Biden/Harris administration, which could spell the end of the Republic.

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Weaponizing the Federal Government - Church Militant

Airbnb bolsters legal division with new hires ahead of IPO – Short Term Rentalz

US: Airbnb has hired multiple lawyers, formerly from tech company Polys legal division, in preparation for the companys initial public offering [IPO] later this year.

It hired Mary Huser has joined as general counsel for risk and regulatory, Iris Chen as deputy general counsel for product, and Miko Ando Brown as associate general counsel for trust and safety.

The company had previously heavily cut its legal department during the 25 per cent layoff round done in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Key changes include the departure of Robert Chestnut, former deputy general counsel and chief of ethics, and Rene Lawson, another deputy general counsel for litigation.

Another significant departure was VP of trust Margaret Richardson, who has previously worked in the companys policy, safety and standards teams. Her previous involvement with Former US Attorney General Eric Holder helped her create Airbnbs anti-discrimination policy.

Airbnbs legal efforts have become more pronounced recently, as its lobbying and litigating wings have both been active. While Airbnb has settled many high-profile lawsuits with cities like New York and Boston, the total number of lawsuits the company has faced in the US has grown significantly since 2018.

Airbnb is rumoured to be aiming to raise $3 billion in an IPO this December. It is seeking to strengthen its relationship with many cities, settling major lawsuits, in anticipation of that development.

All three of the major new hires have significant experience in supporting the legal needs of tech companies. Chen previously worked with Google in its Intellectual Property division for 14 years, while Huser has worked as an in-house counsel with both Blackberry and eBay.

The hires have also been noted for their efforts to improve diversity in the legal industry. Brown started a lecture series focusing on women in leadership, Chen is a member of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, while Huser is a known inclusion advocate.

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Airbnb bolsters legal division with new hires ahead of IPO - Short Term Rentalz

Teenager Therapy, Resistance, and 6 More Podcasts Worth Trying – Vulture

This article was featured in 1.5x Speed,New Yorks podcast recommendation newsletter.Sign up hereto get it weekly.

Photo-Illustration: Vulture

Over the weekend, I stepped into an independent record store for the first time since the onset of the pandemic and almost immediately committed the faux pas of saying the word Spotify in front of the owner of said independent record store. John, Im sorry. Please let me back in.

Meanwhile, tell me which podcasts youre listening to. Its totally fine if you listened on Spotify. Find me on Twitter or reach me over email: nicholas.quah@vulture.com. On to the weeks picks.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Hosted by writer and poet Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr., Resistance offers a collection of a few different portraits from the front lines of the Black Lives Matter protests that have swept the country. Ive only been able to listen to the first three episodes, and the stories run the gamut. The first sees Tejan-Thomas Jr. grappling with his own feelings about political activation and participation as he follows a young Black man evolve from being a first-time protester to a possible first-time local-office candidate. The second is a gripping account of an activist trapped in his home for hours as the NYPD tries a number of different tactics to flush him out. The third tells the story of the only Black man in a small Nebraskan town trying to organize its first Black Lives Matter rally, working in the face of his own experiences with racism in the locality.

Resistance is a striking and vivid listen, at least based on its early innings, and one of its more interesting contributions is the way in which it creates an emotional space for people to process their own feelings about political mobilization. But its not exempt from questions and critiques, of course. That it is the product of a corporate media entity Gimlet Media, a content division of Spotify should expose it to some discourse about the rendering of political expression into an entertainment commodity. Folks who are more radical in their politics might also have things to say about the kinds of political action it grapples with and what it leaves out. But on the whole, these are discussions worth having, and the fact that Resistance provokes me to think about it is a sign that its doing something right.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher

I cant even begin to express just how much I love the latest season of Lost Notes, which dropped in its entirety in late September.

Now in its third season, Lost Notes is a nonfiction anthology podcast from KCRW that weaves together great untold stories from the music world. This outing, called Lost Notes: 1980, was entirely curated and hosted by the poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib, and as you can probably glean from the subtitle, all of its stories revolve around the year 1980. If youre not familiar with Abdurraqibs body of work, you should get acquainted; check out Go Ahead in the Rain, his 2019 book-length love letter to A Tribe Called Quest, or pick up any of his poetry collections. Music, legacy, and the active act of loving art are all themes that tend to pop up in Abdurraqibs creations, and Lost Notes: 1980 is no different.

The enthusiast in me would tell you to work linearly through the season, starting from the Stevie Wonder story all the way down to Grace Jones. But if for some reason you remain skeptical and wish for only a taste, hit up John Lennon & Darby Crash, which revisits how Crash, the co-founder of the extremely influential punk band Germs, took his own life as some means toward achieving cultural immortality only for Lennons murder, which happened less than a day later, to completely overshadow Crashs death.

With the man at the center of its story finally free, In the Dark is dropping one final episode today to wrap up its second season, and it takes the form of an interview with Curtis Flowers himself.

Teenager Therapy is a legitimate phenomenon these days, and the chat-cast featuring a group of teens having sincere conversations about mental health and their lives welcomed special guests in a recent episode: the ex-royals Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, who popped up on the show in honor of World Mental Health Day.

Tracy Clayton already co-hosts a nostalgic pop-culture podcast, Back Issue (with Josh Gwynn), and now shes co-hosting another nostalgic pop-culture podcast, which launches this week: the music-themed My 90s Playlist with Akoto Ofori-Atta.

Lores Aaron Mahnke is producing a fiction podcast series with iHeartMedia and Blumhouse TV thatll star Keegan-Michael Key in the lead role. It will be called Aaron Mahnkes 13 Days of Halloween, and it is scheduled to drop for 13 days leading up to Halloween. That means it will actually start on *checks calendar* October 18, I think?

Heres an interesting artifact: Hearing With Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a Pushkin Industries podcast that launched earlier this month, is basically an interview show in lieu of a political campaign. Weinstein, a former counsel to AG Eric Holder, is running for Manhattan district attorney next year, but obviously it isnt a good idea to be knocking on doors or holding political events right now hence the podcast.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher

I thought Id plug Who the Hell Is Hamish? Its Australian, which may explain why I didnt hear about it when it first came out a couple of years ago, but it got me through a notably dark portion of quarantine and seemed to have the same effect on the people I recommended it to.

Who the Hell Is Hamish? follows a con man as he crisscrosses the globe, swindling victims out of millions at ski resorts in Canada and swanky beach communities in Australia and, despite several near misses, never quite getting caught. At various times, Hamish (a.k.a. Max, a.k.a. Kevin) claims to be an orphan, an orphan who accidentally killed his parents, a twin, a twin who accidentally killed his brother, and a 9/11 survivor. Like most con-man stories, its a lot of fun until it isnt. The second to last episode, an interview with a young woman whose life Hamish upended, is a gut-punch. (Be prepared to spend the next several weeks mistrusting everyone you know.)

Its a wild con-man story with many of the usual contours of wild con-man stories the old he sweeps women off their feet and steals their money gambit and so on but its unusually attentive and sensitive to the victims. Its a good example of a true-crime podcast that tells a great story without overlooking the actual pain at the center of things.

Also: great accents, delightfully incomprehensible Aussie slang, and lots of fun to be had Google Mapping the various beach towns that are mentioned. I cant be the only one who does that, right? Susie A., Chicago, Illinois

And thats a wrap for1.5x Speed! Hope you enjoyed it. Were back next week, but in the meantime: Send podcast recommendations, feedback, or just say hello atnicholas.quah@vulture.com.

Listening notes for the top shows, from Vulture's critic Nick Quah.

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Teenager Therapy, Resistance, and 6 More Podcasts Worth Trying - Vulture

As Trump team rushes to train ‘army’ of poll watchers, experts on watch for voter intimidation – ABC News

Las Vegas political operative Jesse Law is not coy about the chief goal of the Election Day poll-watching operation that the Trump campaign hired him to organize in Nevada.

The main goal is electing the boss, Law told a group of volunteers last week during an online training session that was recorded on video and shared with ABC News.

Law is one of more than a dozen Trump field generals organizing Election Day poll-watching operations in key battleground states and are now engaged in almost-daily training sessions preparing volunteers for long shifts watching the voting process unfold. The presidents campaign is calling it Trumps Army, which they maintain will be a force of 50,000, now being prepped to spend hours quietly eyeballing voters, ready to summon attorneys at the first indication something is amiss.

Ask questions. Were there as observers, Law told trainees in the video. And if its real bad, we'll send mean, nasty, terrible, horrible people called lawyers. And be prepared to escalate.

Law emphasized that the goal is not to interfere with voters, but to flag issues to lawyers, especially if they believe they are witness to acts of voter fraud -- something experts say is a rare occurrence. Rules vary by state, but the campaigns are allowed to have representatives watch the voting process unfold, so long as they don't take steps to disrupt or interfere with those casting their ballots.

Both parties have poll-watching plans for 2020. The Biden campaign effort expects to have a presence at precincts in 21 key states, and is back-stopped by a legal team that includes former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer. A campaign spokesman told ABC News the Biden operation has plans for the largest voter protection program in history, with "thousands" of lawyers and volunteers working on voter protection efforts.

But the widespread presence of Republican poll watchers at polling sites in 2020 will be something new. The party has been restricted from placing partisans inside precincts since the 1980s, when a court ruled that GOP volunteers were systematically harassing and intimidating voters in a manner that violated the Voting Rights Act. A 2018 court ruling lifted those restrictions for the first time in decades.

GOP had 'one hand tied behind its back'

Justin Clark, one of the Trump campaign's top lawyers, said while speaking on a panel about voter fraud at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) in March that the Republican Party had spent 40 years fighting this battle with one hand tied behind its back."

"In 2020, we have a brand new opportunity to be able to activate an Election Day operations program that's really robust," he said, describing a plan to recruit 50,000 volunteers to surveil the voting process.

Democrats have expressed a desire to match that presence with their own poll watchers. How many volunteers will ultimately participate remains uncertain, but the Trump campaign has already spent millions of dollars on the effort, federal election records show. The undertaking has involved several paid consultants, including Stampede America, a little-known firm run by veteran Republican political operatives that has received over $1 million from Republican-leaning groups to recruit Election Day workers.

Legal experts who reviewed videos of the Trump campaign training sessions at the request of ABC News say instructors like Law are using the right language, but that still may yield the wrong results.

One of the major concerns about poll watching is that it will still lead, intentionally or not, to voter intimidation, said Sean Morales-Doyle, the deputy director of voting rights and election programs at the Brennan Center for Justice.

An 'army' doesnt sound like people just there to observe, Morales-Doyle said. An army sounds like people there to engage in war with the enemy.

Responding to that concern in a statement Sunday to ABC News, Clark pushed back: This isnt about intimidation but about transparency in the election process. Anything to the contrary is just demagoguery.

Trump campaign officials said they view poll watchers as critical to ensuring the fairness of the election, a point the president tried to drive home during the first presidential debate. Trump referenced his plans to mobilize his supporters to monitor the polls, saying he is urging my supporters to go in to the polls and watch very carefully.

You know why? Because bad things happen, he said.

Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine Law School, said in a recent interview with Slate that he grew more concerned about voter intimidation when the president in the same debate refused to condemn a hard-right group known for violent confrontations.

Hes talking about sending poll watchers to places. When he says that in a debate at the same time hes talking about the Proud Boys standing by, its very worrisome, Hasen said.

A voter casts his ballot at the Lexington County Voter Registration & Elections Office on the second day of in-person absentee and early voting in Lexington, S.C., Oct. 6, 2020.

'No spectacles, please'

In videos of recent training sessions obtained and reviewed by ABC News, as well as dozens of pre-recorded state-specific instructional presentations that the Trump campaign distributed online, poll watchers are told explicitly to avoid directly engaging with voters. The training sessions, which were advertised on the official campaign website, were conducted by campaign officials including Law, who has been paid more than $35,000 by the campaign since May, according to federal filings.

You guys have to watch your backs, Law says at one point. If you're over there going, Hey, that voter isn't legal! and it's just a person who is completely legal -- that's a black eye for us. Don't do that.

Instead, Law tells the trainees that if they are seeing a problem, document it and talk to the attorneys about it and get to the bottom of it. No spectacles, please.

Speaking to the volunteers, Law explains the overarching goal of the Trump campaigns Election Day operations -- deterring fraud.

Uncovering fraud, exposing some controversy at the end of the day can pick you up anywhere from a quarter percent to two and a half percent [of the vote] based on what we're doing, he says.

Thea McDonald, the campaign's deputy national press secretary, reiterated that point in response to questions from ABC News, saying poll watchers will be trained to ensure all rules are applied equally, all valid ballots are counted, and all Democrat rule breaking is called out."

But some experts are skeptical saying everything will depend on the approach the poll watchers take on Election Day. Morales-Doyle said he is concerned that on the rare occasion that there is rule-breaking, either intentional or not, it should not be immediately portrayed the result of a widespread conspiracy. The training sessions, Morales-Doyle said, imply the opposite.

Thats the tone that runs throughout and probably is the most concerning, he said. The whole goal of this enterprise is to catch a voter fraud conspiracy that doesnt exist.

Residents wait in line to vote at an early voting site, Oct. 2, 2020, in Chicago.

Questions about some generals in Trump's Army

Despite the warnings against conflict at the polls, some of the officials the Trump team has hired to assist with training poll watchers have had a combative history when it comes to voting questions.

In Nevada, Law was involved in a 2016 lawsuit when Democrats sued Trump's campaign for allegedly training its poll watchers to intimidate voters, according to the Associated Press, though the judge ultimately found no evidence of intimidation.

Law joked about the case during his recent training class, saying the poll watching program had been accused of engaging in suppression of the vote for minority voters. Best news is if you Google my name, that does not show up, he said. Maybe because we were successful. Law referred ABC News' request for comment to the national office.

In North Carolina, the Trump campaign has hired Ryan Terrill to oversee poll watchers. When Terrill worked on former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCroy's gubernatorial bid in 2016, the campaign made repeated allegations of fraudulent voting in what critics called "an apparent effort to overcome a narrow defeat."

Democracy North Carolina, a left-leaning nonprofit organization, maintained later that "despite an avalanche of legal filings and the constant drumbeat of serious voter fraud, nearly all of the fraud allegations the campaign had leveled at 600 voters proved to be false. Voters who initially faced the allegations told the nonprofit at the time they were left "shocked" and "furious."

ABC News was not able to reach Terrill directly for comment. The North Carolina Republican Party did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the report.

A poll worker wearing personal protective equipment directs voters to cast their ballots for the upcoming presidential election as early voting begins in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Oct. 6, 2020.

And just last week, one leader of Trumps Pennsylvania Election Day effort had to be escorted out of a satellite election office in Philadelphia's City Hall. Elections officials there accused James Fitzpatrick of causing a "disturbance," a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Sheriff's office told ABC News.

In Pennsylvania, poll watchers are not allowed in satellite offices, which are locations where voters can register to vote and request and return mail in ballots, among other things, and are not considered official polling locations. The Trump campaign has sued to enable poll watchers to monitor these locations, claiming "bad things are happening in Philadelphia," though a judge tossed the suit over the weekend.

"Mr. Fitzpatrick went inside the facility, he was asked why he was there," said Teresa Lundy, the spokesperson for the sheriff's office. And then he pulled out his cellphone and started doing video and taking photographs, and that's when he was approached asked to leave."

Fitzpatrick did not respond to email and phone messages from ABC News seeking comment. His video of the encounter was posted on Twitter by a Trump campaign staffer. A Trump campaign spokesperson told ABC News the incident was "another instance of Philly election officials denying observers access to the voting places."

A few days after the incident, Fitzpatrick was back talking to Trumps 2020 volunteers. On a video of a training session obtained by ABC News, he can be seen making clear his goal. Discussing an effort to review absentee ballot applications, he said: We're going to need people to go through them and issue challenges.

We think it all comes down to Pennsylvania this year, he told the group. We could use the help. Let us know if youre interested.

This report was featured in the Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020, episode of Start Here, ABC News daily news podcast.

"Start Here" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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As Trump team rushes to train 'army' of poll watchers, experts on watch for voter intimidation - ABC News