Cobb's Judiciary Committee Testimony Shakes Up Ohio Election Investigation
By Brad Blog   ILCA  14 December 2004

The Cobb testimony concerned an eyewitness account from an Elections Official about election machine tampering by a worker from Triad Governmental Systems, Inc. as late as last Friday!

A transcription of part of David Cobb's testimony is now available online via RAW STORY.

Cobb claimed to have spoken over the weekend to an unidentified eyewitness to the tampering in an unspecified Ohio county.

Said Cobb at today's hearings, "A representative came in on Friday to see if there were any questions, the Triad representative had told him that [the machine] 'had a bad battery' and had 'lost all the data'. The machine was then taken completely apart" and it's memory apparently permanently lost.

All of this before the full Ohio state recount demanded by the Green and Libertarian parties has been able to get fully underway.

Th eyewitness, who was unnamed in the public hearings, was later identified and interviewed privately by staffers from the office of Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Judiciary committee.

Reliable sources have informed The BRAD BLOG that the investigation into this matter by Conyers is currently "ongoing" and the conclusion of staffers so far is that the eyewitness and information presented is "100% real and credible".

Cobb noted today in emotional testimony that "this is going on all over the state of Ohio."

Break For News reported earlier today that Cobb accused Triad of "attempting to orchestrate a fraudulent recount of the 3 percent of precincts likely to be included in the first phase of the recount process." (Audio of Cobb's testimony also available at the site.)

They further report...

Cobb cited one case detailed by an as yet anonymous informant, that a Triad GSI employee had told staff at the Columbus County Board of Elections office to inconspicuously note a prepared recount result, then report this data irrespective of the actual recount. The Triad GSI representative had also tampered with Triad voting equipment in the offices.

A letter sent to all 88 Ohio Elections Boards last Friday by Donald J. McTigue, the Kerry-Edwards State Counsel in Ohio speaks to concerns by the Kerry campaign about how the 3 percent sample, discussed by Cobb, will be chosen. That letter also expresses a number of other notable concerns to the Ohio Elections officials.

Further notable news out of the hearings, in a day already filled with enough BRAD BLOG sirens to made Drudge's head spin, include troubling reports from Columbus Free Press' Bob Fitrakis who testified to the Committee last Wednesday in D.C. and again today in Columbus.

Fitrakis, who's excellent reporting on the ground in Ohio has set the standard for investigative journalism over the past month, had several troubling reports in his testimony, several of which are described in this Free Press article.

Amongst his reports are first hand accounts of a "a team of 25 people who called themselves the 'Texas Strike Force' using payphones to make intimidating calls to likely voters, targeting people recently in the prison system." The calls were made from a Holiday Inn and were observed by a worker there. Apparently people were warned that they if they had child-support payments due, or outstanding traffic-tickets, they could be arrested at the polls on Election Day.

Fitrakis presented evidence to the committee which demonstrates that the hotel used was paid for by the Ohio Republican Party whose headquarters is across the street!

He also reports on, and testified to, new information including arial photographs from the Warren County Elections Board on the night of their now infamous Election Night "lockdown" which officials had attributed to warnings received from the FBI about terror warnings.

The FBI has since denied giving any such warnings to anybody in Ohio. We hope to have more details on those photographs in a report soon.

We're sorry to have had to break out the siren so many times today, though it was suggested to The BRAD BLOG by our source that the Cobb revelations warranted three! We'll stick with one for now.

But we will also take this opportunity to note for the skeptics out there who have wondered where the corporate media is on so much of this, and how one can be sure they can trust "Internet bloggers" like The BRAD BLOG and "Internet-only news sites" like RAW STORY who has also produced quite a bit of good breaking information on these events that we, so far, have gotten the story right on all of these matters from the get-go.

The BRAD BLOG was the first to break the news of the Democratic Judiciary Hearings, and the first to bring you the exclusive report on the Clint Curtis "WHISTLEBLOWER AFFIDAVIT" that lead to today's "jaw ping" sworn testimony by Curtis in front of the Committee.

Furthermore, we'll note that, as of this hour, according to AP, those objecting and writing about questionable Election Results in Ohio and elsewhere are now officially described as "dissidents".

"Dissidents" is a step up, we suppose, from "conspiracy theorists" and "leftwing bloggers", and frankly...sounds a bit Ukranian.

So we'll take it.