Agency Reporter

A South Florida lawyer who helped Republicans try to challenge the results of the presidential election in Georgia was among tens of thousands of Twitter users removed from the site in the aftermath of the riot in Washington after posting messages he said were given to him by one of former President Donald Trump’s most controversial allies.

Before he was banned this month, Carlos E. Silva — whose Coral Gables firm, Silva & Silva, has represented clients in high-profile cases in Miami-Dade County — said on Twitter that he was tweeting messages on behalf of L. Lin Wood, an Atlanta attorney who has promoted debunked allegations, including that voting machines used in U.S. elections were rigged in cooperation with late-Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

Wood was suspended from Twitter following the Capitol insurrection and then permanently booted.

“Lin Wood asked me to post this: President Donald Trump is aware of the attempted coup.

He is in control,” Silva, 55, tweeted on January 6 after alerting his followers that he would be sharing information from Wood.

He added: “Remember there is only one president at a time. Trust him. God has a plan.”

A Twitter spokesman would not discuss specific tweets, but said Silva’s @carlosesilva65 account “was permanently suspended for violations of the Twitter Rules on ban evasion.”

The policy prohibits users from helping other suspended users get around their prohibition, among other things. Bans apply to the users behind the accounts.

In an interview last week, Silva said he was indeed passing along messages from Wood. But he said Twitter shouldn’t have cut off his access, and his removal is evidence of the site’s censorship of Trump’s supporters.

“They should be sued for what they’ve done to conservatives.

“I’ve never posted any aggression to anybody,” said Silva, who contributed at least 250,000 dollars to Republican campaigns last year despite being a registered Democrat.

Silva, a licensed Florida attorney since 1994, did not respond to subsequent interview requests this week for more information about his Twitter messages regarding Wood.

The Miami Herald also called and texted Wood several times within the last week to ask about his relationship with Silva. Wood did not respond.

When Silva spoke to The Miami Herald earlier this month, he downplayed his relationship with Wood.

But the two crossed paths online and in court in the weeks that followed the 2020 election as Trump claimed to be the victim of elections fraud in key swing states that voted for now-President Joe Biden.

In Georgia, where Wood sued unsuccessfully to overturn Biden’s win in the state, Silva was part of a group of South Florida legal professionals who filed affidavits in support of Wood’s federal lawsuit after visiting elections offices in the Atlanta suburbs to observe what was effectively a hand recount of the presidential election.

Silva and others swore to have witnessed what they believed to be evidence of fraud.

Wood also praised Silva on Twitter in the weeks following the presidential election, calling him a “truth-giver.”

And he thanked Silva for his dedication as Wood continued to argue that the election was stolen from Trump.

“I want ALL to know that Carlos Silva & members of his law firm, Silva & Silva in Coral Gables, FL have worked long hours to help me over the last several weeks.

“Carlos & his team are American Patriots & quiet heroes for their efforts for freedom,” Wood posted on Dec. 11.

In the post, Wood urged people to follow Silva at @Carloss16204129, an account that doesn’t currently exist.

Silva responded to Wood’s post the same day from his @carlosesilva65 account and wrote that “the greatest thing that all patriots can do at this time is collect any information on voter fraud and forward it to Mr. Wood #MAGA.”

The day before the riot at the Capitol, Silva also encouraged people on Twitter to visit a website that provided template letters to send to U.S. senators to encourage them to vote on Jan. 6 to de-certify the results of swing states that went for Biden.

Allegations of widespread voter fraud have been repeatedly debunked in the weeks since Biden won the 2020 election.

The state of Georgia confirmed Biden’s victory by recounting all 5 million ballots cast in the election by hand.

An audit of absentee ballot signatures in Fulton County ordered by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in response to GOP accusations of mail ballot fraud found no evidence that any had occurred.

Wood, a prominent attorney who represented Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene in his defamation case against The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times, was unsuccessful in two election-related lawsuits he filed as a plaintiff in Georgia federal court, one of which sought to halt the Jan. 5 U.S. Senate runoff contest ultimately won by two Democrats.

When asked about his involvement with Wood’s lawsuit seeking to challenge the results of the presidential election in Georgia, Silva wouldn’t discuss the details of what he saw in Georgia or his involvement in Wood’s case and said he distrusts the media.

“You won’t see my signature anywhere. That’s all I can tell you. After that, I was in Georgia and I guess Lin Wood is known there,” said Silva, who did not explain why Wood reached out to him following his removal from Twitter.

Silva, though, defended the statements he made in his Nov. 17 affidavit submitted on behalf of a motion by Wood to temporarily stop the state of Georgia from certifying its presidential election results, saying “I would never file anything frivolous.”

And he told the Miami Herald that the media is lying about there being no evidence of election fraud.

“For the media to say there’s no evidence is a pure lie. There are many affidavits.

“There are reports, experts, many things, videos put together, and no judge has looked at a single piece of evidence,” said Silva, who began an interview by asking a reporter how he voted and whether he was a Democrat.

“There’s a lot of evidence,” he added.

Silva said he traveled to Georgia in mid-November because he wanted to see if talk of election fraud was accurate.

Bidenhad won the state by about 14,000 votes, and Raffensperger, the secretary of state, had ordered a hand recount of the entire presidential election in order to help address allegations of fraud and chicanery.

The recount confirmed Biden’s victory by a smaller margin of about 12,000 votes.

Silva’s suspicions about the election were shared by a number of Republicans and Trump voters around the country and in Miami-Dade County, where Trump successfully boosted his support in significant numbers.

“I wanted to see if it was true, if an election can be stolen in this country,” Silva said,

A Georgia Republican Party list of election observers in Henry County, south of Atlanta, included Silva, a paralegal at his firm and an attorney who listed the same address as Silva & Silva, among other South Florida legal professionals. Silva’s affidavit didn’t mention any visits to Henry County.

But he swore under oath in the affidavit that he saw election workers in nearby DeKalb and Cobb counties count “thousands of (mail) ballots that just had the perfect bubbled marked for Biden and no other markings in the rest of the ballot.”

Silva also swore that he saw Trump ballots placed into stacks of Biden votes and hostility toward Republican observers.

“Based on my observations, I have reached the conclusion that in the counties I have observed, there is widespread fraud favoring candidate Biden only,” Silva wrote.

Janine Eveler, Cobb County’s director of elections, dismissed Silva’s allegations.

READ ALSO: Twitter suspends Iran’s supreme leader account

“All of his ‘observations’ are skewed, conflated, or manipulated to match what he wanted to believe was going on.

“If I’m being generous, I could also say he just did not understand the process,” Eveler wrote after The Miami Herald emailed her a link to Silva’s affidavit.

A spokesman for Raffensperger wouldn’t specifically address the allegations in Silva’s affidavit but pointed to a letter the secretary of state sent to members of Congress seeking to debunk false allegations ahead of the Jan. 6 vote to certify the election.

In the letter, Raffensperger noted that there were “numerous reasons” for the existence of “pristine” mail ballots lacking creases or evidence of wear and tear.

“The unstated implication of this allegation is that county elections officials are creating fake or invalid ballots and running them through scanners,” wrote Raffensperger.

“There is absolutely no evidence this happened a single time in Georgia,” he added.

In Georgia’s northern district, federal District Judge Steven Grimberg ultimately denied Wood’s motion for a temporary restraining order, an effort to stop the certification of the Nov. 3 vote.

But Silva says he witnessed ballot tampering first-hand and doesn’t understand why there isn’t more of an effort to investigate.

He also believes Twitter has over-stepped its bounds and is controlling free speech.

“This is horrific. This is terrifying,” said Silva, who noted that his parents came to the U.S. from Cuba and said he was worried about the Democratic Party’s leftward bend.

“And I’ll try for the future of my children to keep fighting for freedom, the first amendment, and that’s all I can tell you, buddy.”

(tca/dpa/NAN)

Our Reporter

Ugandan soldiers working as part of a peacekeeping force in Somalia have killed 189 al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab fighters in an attack on one of their camps, the Ugandan army said.

Ugandan troops are part of the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, whose aim is to support the central government and stop al Shabaab’s efforts to topple it.

The Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) said in a statement that its soldiers on Friday had raided al Shabaab hideouts in the villages of Sigaale, Adimole and Kayitoy, just over 100 km (62 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu.
“(The raid)… saw the forces put out of action 189 al Qaeda-linked fighters and destroyed a number of military hardware and items used by the terrorist attacks,” UPDF said.

READ ALSO: Uganda internet shutdown and why Nigerians should be worried

There was no immediate comment from al Shabaab on the attack.

The group – which aims to topple Somalia’s government and impose its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law – controlled most of south-central Somalia until 2011, when it was driven out of Mogadishu by African Union troops.

Despite the loss of territory, al Shabaab still carries out major gun and bomb attacks, often claiming casualty numbers that conflict with those given by government officials.

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

Our Reporter

The website of Iran’s Supreme Leader on Friday carried the image of a golfer resembling former President Donald Trump apparently being targeted by a drone alongside a threat of revenge over last year’s killing of a top Iranian general in a U.S. drone attack.

The image first appeared on a Persian-language Twitter feed that carried a link to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s website. Twitter took down that feed on Friday, saying it was fake.

Underneath the website pictures were remarks by Khamenei in December ahead of the first anniversary this month of the killing of military commander General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, which was ordered by Trump.

“Both the murderers and those who ordered it should know that revenge may come at any time,” said the comments on top of the image, which showed the shadow of a drone looming over the lone golfer. Trump, who regularly plays golf, was not named.

U.S.-Iran tensions grew rapidly after 2018 when Trump exited a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers and reimposed crippling sanctions.

Tehran retaliated for Soleimani’s killing with missile strikes against U.S. targets in Iraq but the two sides backed away from further confrontation.

High tension and risk of war appeared to subside with the end of Trump’s term. His successor President Joe Biden, sworn in on Wednesday, has said Washington seeks to lengthen and strengthen the nuclear constraints on Iran through diplomacy.

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Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the Biden White House National Security Council, said “these kinds of threats from Iran are unacceptable.”

“We strongly condemn this provocative action. We will continue to work with our friends and partners to counter Iran’s malign influence,” she said in response to a request for comment.

The top Republican on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, earlier urged the Biden administration “to respond quickly and forcefully to this provocative threat against a former president” and called on Twitter to immediately and permanently suspend Khamenei’s account.

An official close to Khamenei’s inner circle said: “The aim (of the tweet) was to remind the gambler (Trump) that leaving office does not mean he will be safe and the assassination of our martyr Soleimani will be forgotten.”

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

A fire broke out Thursday at India’s Serum Institute, the world’s largest maker of vaccines, but a source said production of the coronavirus vaccine was not affected.

Television channels showed thick clouds of gray smoke billowing from the site in Pune in western India.

The Serum Institute is producing millions of doses of the Covishield coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

“It is not going to affect the production of the Covid-19 vaccine,” a source at the Serum Institute told AFP, adding that the blaze was at a new plant under construction.

An official at the local fire station told AFP that six or seven firetrucks had reached the site.

“We have no other information… on the extent of the fire or whether anyone is trapped,” the official said.

In January, Indian regulators approved two vaccines — Covishield, produced by the Serum Institute, and Covaxin, made by local firm Bharat Biotech.

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India began one of the world’s biggest vaccine rollouts on Saturday, aiming to vaccinate 300 million people by July with both Covishield and Covaxin.

Many other countries are relying on the Serum Institute to supply them with the vaccine.
India exported its first batch on Wednesday — to Bhutan and the Maldives — followed by two million doses to Bangladesh and a million to Nepal.

The country plans to offer 20 million doses to its South Asian neighbors, with Latin America, Africa and Central Asia next in line.

Serum Institute, the world’s biggest vaccine maker by volume, also plans to supply 200 million doses to Covax, a World Health Organization-backed effort to procure and distribute inoculations to poor countries.

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

Twin suicide bombings have ripped through a busy market in the Iraqi capital, killing at least 28 people and wounding 73 others, officials said.

The rare suicide bombing attack hit the Bab al-Sharqi commercial area in central Baghdad amid heightened political tensions over planned early elections and a severe economic crisis.

Blood smeared the floors of the busy market amid piles of clothes and shoes as survivors took stock of the disarray in the aftermath.

Iraq’s military said at least 28 people were killed and 73 wounded in the attack and said some of the injured were in serious condition.

The country’s Health Ministry announced all of its hospitals in the capital were mobilised to treat the wounded.

The attack occurred as security forces pursued two suicide bombers who detonated their explosives in the market near Tayaran Square, according to military spokesman Yahya Rasool.

The suicide bombings marked the first in three years to target Baghdad’s bustling commercial area.

A suicide bomb attack took place in the same area in 2018 shortly after then-prime minister Haidar al-Abadi declared victory over so-called Islamic State (IS).

No-one immediately took responsibility for Thursday’s attack, but Iraq has seen assaults perpetrated by both IS and militia groups in recent months.

Militias have routinely targeted the American presence in Iraq with rocket and mortar attacks, especially the US embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

The pace of those attacks, however, has decreased since an informal truce was declared by Iran-backed armed groups in October.

The style of Thursday’s assault was similar to those IS has conducted in the past.

But the group has rarely been able to penetrate the capital since being dislodged by Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition in 2017.

The twin bombings came days after Iraq’s government unanimously agreed to hold early elections in October.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi had announced in July that early polls would be held to meet the demands of anti-government protesters.

Demonstrators took to the streets in the tens of thousands last year to demand political change, and an end to rampant corruption and poor services.

More than 500 people were killed in mass demonstrations as security forces used live rounds and tear gas to disperse crowds.

Iraq is also grappling with a severe economic crisis brought on by low oil prices that has led the government to borrow internally and risk depleting its foreign currency reserves.

The Central Bank of Iraq devalued Iraq’s dinar by nearly 20% last year to meet spending obligations.

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

Our Reporter

The Nelson Mandela Foundation on Wednesday confirmed that it was investigating allegations against its own senior managers.

The foundation, which seeks to promote the legacy of the world statesman who died in 2013, has been left red-faced after an anonymous complaint from staff members accused Chief Executive Officer, Sello Hatang, and Chief Operations Officer, Limpho Monyamane, of graft.

These allegedly include procurement impropriety and the misuse of the foundation’s credit cards.

Foundation chairman Njabulo Ndebele, said the investigation was initiated in December and it took the allegations seriously and was committed to ensuring a fair and proper outcome.

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The foundation said it was committed to transparency and the outcome of the investigation would be made public once a report had been considered by the board.

The foundation was established in 1999 when Mandela stepped down as the President of South Africa. It seeks to contribute to making a just society by mobilising his legacy, providing public access to information on his life and times, and convening dialogue on critical social issues.

(PANA/NAN)