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A conservative group called out Donald Trump for suggesting hed pardon Jan. 6 rioters if hes elected president again in 2024.

The new video from the Republican Accountability Project juxtaposes Trumps pardon comments with video footage of his supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol, assaulting police officers and attempting to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

The organization, run by Republicans opposed to Trump, said the spot will air nationally on Fox & Friends, a show the former president is known to watch:

Trumps pardon promise has been panned by both the left and the right.

My view is I would not be in favor of shortening any of the sentences to any of the people who pled guilty to crimes, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week.

If you do the crime, you do the time. You shouldnt be pardoned for that, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said at a separate event.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trumps remark was pretty revealing.

They go to his intent, Schiff said on MSNBC this week. If this violence against the Capitol wasnt part of the plan, or wasnt something he condoned, then why would he consider pardoning them?

For the past year, the Republican Accountability Project has been calling out the lawmakers who enabled Trump and supported the Jan. 6 insurrection, including 13 members of Congress who are featured in the groups online Hall of Shame. The organization is also looking to support primary challengers to ensure that as few of them as possible return to Congress in 2022.

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Conservative Group Exposes Trump's Latest Threat In Damning Fox News Ad - HuffPost

FILE Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, Nov. 30, 2021. Pence said Friday in a speech in Florida that the former president is simply wrong when he says Pence had the right to unilaterally overturn the election. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday directly rebutted Donald Trumps false claims that Pence somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply wrong.

In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trumps intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that he could have done something to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

President Trump is wrong, Pence said. I had no right to overturn the election.

While Pence in the past has defended his actions on Jan. 6 and said that he and Trump willlikely never see eye to eyeon what happened that day, the remarks Friday marked his most forceful rebuttal of Trump to date. And they come as Pence has been laying the groundwork for a potential run for president in 2024, which could put him in direct competition with his former boss, who has also been teasing a comeback run.

In a statement Tuesday, Trump said the committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol should instead probe why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval. And on Sunday, he blasted Pence, falsely declaring that he could have overturned the Election!

Vice presidents play only a ceremonial role in the the counting of Electoral College votes, and any attempt to interfere in the count would have represented a profound break from precedent and democratic norms.

Pence, in his remarks Friday, described Jan. 6, 2021, as a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.

Pence was inside the building, presiding over the joint session of Congress to certify the presidential election, when a mob of Trumps supporters violently smashed inside, assaulting police officers and hunting down lawmakers. Pence, who had released a statement earlier that day to make clear he had no authority to overturn the will of the voters, was rushed to safety as some rioters chanted Hang Mike Pence!

Pence framed his actions that day as in line with his duty as a constitutional conservative.

The American people must know that we will always keep our oath to the Constitution, even when it would be politically expedient to do otherwise, he told the group Friday. He noted that, under Article II Section One of the Constitution, elections are conducted at the state level, not by Congress and that the only role of Congress with respect to the Electoral College is to open and count votes submitted and certified by the states. No more, no less.

Frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president, he added. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.

Pence also acknowledged the lingering anger among many in Trumps base. But, he said: The truth is, theres more at stake than our party or political fortunes. Men and women, if we lose faith in the Constitution, we wont just lose elections well lose our country.

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Trump is wrong: Pence says he had no right to overturn 2020 election - FOX31 Denver

GRAND RAPIDS, MI Ben Carson is the featured speaker Monday at a campaign rally for John Gibbs, a Republican endorsed by former President Donald Trump who wants to unseat Rep. Peter Meijer in the August GOP primary for Michigans 3rd Congressional District.

Doors open for the rally, being held at the Deltaplex in Walker, at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 7.

Gibbs served during the Trump administration as acting assistant secretary for community planning and development at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Carson was Secretary of HUD during Trumps presidency.

Free tickets for Mondays rally are available at votejohngibbs.com.

Dr. Carson is a very unique individual whose story serves as an inspiration to all of us as to what is possible with hard work and dedication, Gibbs, who worked at HUD from 2017 to 2021, said in a statement. I am honored to call him a friend, and humbled that he is willing to support my campaign.

Carson was appointed chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the age of 33, making him the youngest major division director in the hospitals history, according to Carsons bio on the Carson Scholars Fund website.

While at HUD, Gibbs oversaw an annual budget of $8 billion to help fight homelessness and expand economic opportunity, according to his campaign website. He was also nominated by Trump to serve as the director of the Office of Personnel Management. However, the Senate did not confirm his appointment, according to Scott Hagerstrom, a strategist whos advising Gibbs and ran Trumps Michigan campaign in 2016.

In July 2020, after Trump nominated Gibbs to serve as director of the Office of Personal Management, CNN reported that Gibbs, on the social media platform Twitter, spread a false conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign chairman took part in a satanic ritual.

The network also reported that Gibbs defended an anti-Semitic Twitter user who had been banned from the platform, and made derogatory comments about Islam and the Democratic Party.

Prior to serving in the Trump administration, worked as a software developer in Silicon Valley on cybersecurity products at Symantec, and on the first version of the iPhone at Apple. He is a graduate of Stanford University, where he earned a bachelors degree in computer science, and a masters degree in public administration from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, his website shows.

Gibbs grew up in Eaton County and moved to Byron Center in October 2021, Hagerstrom said.

Several Republicans are seeking to challenge Meijer in the August primary for Michigans 3rd Congressional District seat, which includes Grand Rapids. Meijer angered Trumps base when he voted to impeach the former president following the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.

The 3rd Congressional District, as its drawn now, includes Grand Rapids, a large portion of Kent County, part of Montcalm County, as well as Ionia, Barry and Calhoun counties. However, the once a decade redistricting process has changed the shape of the district.

The newly drawn district, in effect for this years election, includes Grand Rapids as well as the surrounding suburbs as far north as Rockford and as far south as Byron Center. It also includes the northern half of Ottawa County, including Grand Haven, Spring Lake, Allendale and Coopersville. The southern portion of Muskegon County, including the cities of Muskegon and Muskegon Heights, is included too.

Political observers say the newly drawn district is a toss up between Democrats and Republicans.

Federal Election Commission records shows Gibbs has $83,246 on hand as of Dec. 31, 2021. Meijer, on the other hand, had $1.2 million on hand. Two other Republicans, Audra Johnson and Gabriella Manolache, also are seeking Meijers seat, FEC records show.

Democrat Hillary Scholten, who was defeated by Meijer in the 2020 election, says shes again seeking the Democrat nomination to run against the winner of the Republican primary in the November election.

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Ben Carson to speak at rally for Trump-backed candidate seeking to replace Peter Meijer in Congress - MLive.com

In response to donors' requests, the Wikimedia Foundation started accepting cryptocurrency donations in 2014.

Eight years later, a longtime Wikipedia editor is arguing "it is no longer ethical" to continue to accept crypto.

"Cryptocurrencies have been joined by a bubble of predatory, inherently harmful technologies," the editor, Molly White, wrote in an opinion piece for the organization's newspaper, The Signpost, published Sunday. White, known on the site by her handle GorillaWarfare, is also a software engineer at HubSpot and has written on blockchain technologies and privacy.

Early cryptocurrency advocates promised the tech would become an alternative to traditional banking. It was meant to create privacy, anonymity, decentralization, and freedom, particularly for those who couldn't afford traditional banking. It was to help those who couldn't open accounts, get loans or credit cards, or afford processing fees.

"The idea was that this would give financial freedom to a lot of people," White told Insider over email.

But, as cryptocurrency has matured into Web3, "those values don't really seem so central anymore," she told Insider. "Most projects are more interested in making a quick buck, and are in fact very centralized."

Instead of decentralized freedom, much crypto wealth has landed in the hands of the few while becoming a risky speculation investment that "resembles a landscape with scammers and marks," her piece argued in classic Wikipedia style full of footnotes to document her points.

More than that, White maintains that crypto mining is harmful to the environment and is misaligned with the Wikimedia Foundation's Resolution for Environmental Impact approved by the board of trustees in 2017 to "reduce the impact of our activities on the environment." She cites research on how China and Kazakhstan, the two largest centers for mining bitcoin, have relied heavily on coal to power such operations and have begun to crack down on mining.

She says continuing to accept crypto risks damaging the nonprofit's reputation.

"Tons of people dismiss concerns about the environmental damage of the Ethereum blockchain because the project plans to move to a proof-of-stake soon," she reflected. Proof-of-stake is an alternative approach to proof-of-work's computational-intensive approach, which validates transactions through a math puzzle. Instead, transactions are approved by individual validators through a consensus process.

"Problem is, Ethereum has been saying they will move to proof-of-stake 'soon' for years now, while doing enormous environmental damage," White said.

White doesn't stand alone. Mozilla paused cryptocurrency donations after a tweet announcing a partnership with BitPay drew backlash. The Mozilla cofounder Jamie "jwz" Zawinski went so far as to call the crypto world "planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters." BitPay is a processor that charges a 1% processing fee and is also used by Wikimedia.

Whether White's plea will have an impact is unclear, but the organization says it's listening to its community on the matter. "We are monitoring recent concerns raised by the community around cryptocurrency donations, and considering them seriously as we determine our path forward," a Wikimedia Foundation representative said.

The person also described cryptocurrency as "still a small portion of the overall revenue to the Wikimedia Foundation," bringing in $130,100.94 last year. That's 0.08% of revenue from donations, making it the foundation's smallest funding source.

Despite this, White argues against its optics.

"The fact of the matter is that most cryptocurrency donations to the WMF came in via Bitcoin, an enormously damaging currency with no intentions to move to a more sustainable model," she emailed Insider, using an abbreviation for the Wikimedia Foundation.

"People are trying to use technology alone to solve social problems, and that's never going to work," she continued. "Its promises weren't any more realistic ten years ago than they are now."

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Wikipedia Editor Urges the Org to Stop Accepting Crypto - Business Insider

A streaming website that features Iranian state television programming has acknowledged suffering technical issues amid reports that dissident hackers played an anti-government message on the platform

ByThe Associated Press

February 2, 2022, 11:32 AM

2 min read

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- A streaming website that features Iranian state television programming has acknowledged suffering technical issues amid reports that dissident hackers played an anti-government message on the platform.

Telewebion said it suffered infrastructure irregularities Tuesday and suffered an archive failure, without elaborating on the cause.

The problems came as a video message circulated online claiming to be from a self-described group of hackers called The Justice of Ali" in Farsi. In the video, which Farsi-language news networks abroad say played on the streaming platform, a masked man appears and a muffled voice says Iran's government will no longer silence us.

Well burn hijabs. Well burn their pictures and propaganda posters, the man says. We will break their idols. We will reveal their palaces so that the people can punish them.

The Justice of Ali did not immediately respond to a request for comment via an account it used in an earlier conversation with The Associated Press. In August it released footage showing grim condition at Iran's notorious Evin prison it claimed it obtained through a hack.

The video comes just ahead of commemoration ceremonies for Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution this month. It also follows an apparent hack Thursday that saw multiple channels of Irans state television broadcast images showing the leaders of an exiled dissident group and a graphic calling for the death of the countrys supreme leader.

The incident Tuesday potentially marks the latest in a series of embarrassing cyberattacks against the Islamic Republic, as world powers struggle to revive a tattered nuclear deal with Tehran. Other attacks, which Iran has blamed on Israel, have targeted its nuclear program.

In October, an assault on Irans fuel distribution system paralyzed gas stations nationwide, leading to long lines of angry motorists unable to get subsidized fuel for days. An earlier cyberattack on Irans railway system caused chaos and train delays.

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Iran state TV streaming site targeted with dissident message