About That Durham Report

The long-awaited Durham report came out on Monday, May 15. It’s over 300 pages, so, while there has been a lot of immediate response, there may also be a longer time for some things to boil up to the surface. There are two main responses:

·        Yes, just as we knew, the whole Russia collusion hoax was indeed an invention of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

·        But why is no one being prosecuted?

So there’s the satisfaction of having the evidence laid out for the public to see—although the public that hadn’t already seen it won’t be fed this information from the press who kept them from seeing what the rest of us saw all along. And there’s also the disappointment that we’re not about to see perp walks of the many colluders who have been fighting against our rights and freedoms.

You can read the Durham Report in full here. 

I’ll do a fairly brief summary of the highlights. And then list a few of the sources I listened to, some of which have a thought or two to add.

The full Durham Report is available here.

 

The Summary

Glenn Beck did a fairly good summary here. I’ll go through what he said, using some of the transcript and an occasional paraphrase of his words:

There was a meeting August 3, 2016, a briefing by CIA director John Brennan, in the Oval Office, with Barack Obama (president at the time), Joe Biden (VP at the time), James Comey (FBI Director at the time), and other senior administration officials. According to Brennan’s handwritten notes and his recollections from the meeting, he briefed those in the room on relevant intelligence known to date on Russian election interference, including “the Clinton Plan intelligence.”

Durham writes, “specifically Director Brennan’s declassified handwritten notes reflect that he briefed the meeting’s participants regarding the alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on the 26th of July of a proposal from one of her campaign advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian Security Services.”

When the Steele dossier comes out, they all know that it is the Clinton Plan intelligence.

When they receive it, they know it is false, that it is the Clinton campaign invention, but they launch a full (not preliminary) investigation anyway. The agents didn’t then or in hindsight have any belief that any of the claims in the dossier were true.

Then they leak the information to the press, knowing it to be false.

There’s more. On August 22, 2016, an FBI cyber analyst sent an email to the Bureau employees and senior intelligence officials informing them of the details of the Clinton Plan. They “failed to remember” any follow-up actions the Bureau might have taken after the second briefing on it.

The FBI, when it got the Steele dossier, knowing it to be the Clinton campaign fabrication they were briefed would be coming—when they got it, they went to Christopher Steele (author of the dossier) and offered to pay him $1 million, and pay his primary sources money, if anyone was able to provide proof (or at least provide plausible evidence).

As Glenn Beck explains, what we see is that, when Hillary Clinton’s operatives couldn’t get anything really solid, they pass the made-up dossier to the FBI. The FBI looks at it and goes, “This is garbage.” “Yeah, I know, but it could be true.” “All right. Offer him a million dollars if he can come up with something.”

FBI Agent Brian Auten traveled to Rome and met with Steele in October 2016. And he made the offer knowing that the dossier relied primarily on one person or sub-source. The Bureau paid that sub-source, Igor Danchenko, around $250,000 (of our tax money) even after he was unable to provide any evidence for a single claim.

The FBI made this payout even though they had significant evidence that Danchenko himself was Russian Intelligence. It had closed a counterintelligence investigation into him in 2011, because agents mistakenly believed he had left the country. The FBI had investigated Danchenko as a possible Russian spy from 2009-2011, after a colleague at the Brooking Institute, the left-leaning think tank where he worked, told the FBI that Danchenko raised the prospect of paying him for classified information if the colleague would join the Obama administration.

A second Brookings employee also told the FBI that he suspected Danchenko of being connected to Russian Intelligence. It became a full-fledged investigation when the FBI realized that Danchenko was a known associate of two other spies and had contacts with known Russian Intelligence officers, and had said he wanted to join the Russian diplomatic service. He also told another person that he worked on “special matters” for the Russian army and that his Russian passport listed him as connected to the Russian military intelligence service.

They paid Danchenko $250,000 to prove that Trump was colluding with people like him. He couldn’t come up with that evidence.

The Clinton campaign, with significant help from the FBI, and at least tacit approval from Obama, Biden, and the other senior administration officials, colluded with Russian spies to interfere with the 2016 election by claiming that Trump was doing the very thing they were actually doing.

Let’s add to that a few details.

The FBI comes out with a statement, after the report came out Monday: “The conduct in the 2016 and 2017 special counsel Durham examined was the reason that the current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which now have been in place for some time.” As Glenn Beck adds, with some irony, “So they fixed it. Nothing to see here. No one went to jail. No one was fired. No one was held accountable. But trust us, they say, we’ve fixed it.”

Except, remember that guy who paid Steele in Rome? Agent Brian Auten? He was a primary figure in squelching the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 election. 2016 was the first attempt to take out Trump with election interference; 2020 was when they pulled out all the stops, and that was just one of them. So, no, the FBI hasn’t “fixed it,” clearly.

There’s this other niggling detail. I’m not sure yet whether it’s in the report. But the Steele dossier got them the FISA warrant, to spy on the Trump campaign. That was illegal, since they knew the dossier was fake, and was provided by the Clinton campaign, although they hid that information from the FISA judge.

But they kept spying, even after Trump was in the White House. Without any reason or pretext, they spied on a sitting president of the United States. If they would do that, what would they not do?

One question about this period is about the Adam Schiff lie. He was chair of the House Intelligence Committee at the time. Law professor Jonathan Turley tweets this:

Given Durham's findings that there was no basis for the actions taken by the FBI in launching this investigation, this would be a good time for former House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff to reveal that evidence he said showed the Russian collusion… Schiff and other Democrats previously sought to prevent Durham from continuing his investigation and issuing this report.

Yes, I’d like to see exactly what evidence Schiff could produce, that he was referring to back then. But don’t expect media to actually ask the question.

Glenn Beck explains the Durham Report.
screenshot from here

 

The Commentary

Several of the commentators responding have referred to the episode as an attempted coup. That is not hyperbole. By definition, it was “a sudden appropriation of leadership or power; a takeover.” The people are supposed to be in power in America; we choose our leaders, who are obliged to abide by the law and listen to the people in making laws. 2016 was definitely a coup attempt. So was the Ukraine phonecall they impeached Trump for—wherein there were no laws broken, and in reality it was a cautious warning to Ukraine’s new president at the time of corruption in his government—which Biden was deeply involved in.

Then there was the 2020 election—in which they interfered by claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation so as to sway the election. And then there were all the changes in election law, supposedly because of COVID, making cheating easier. A coup is the Occam’s Razor explanation for a feeble candidate such as Biden, who barely campaigned and had no excited support, winning the election with more votes than any candidate in history.

Then there have been the various lawsuits, which in sane times would get immediately dismissed, but in our insane times seem to be an attempt to find something that will make Trump ineligible to run again, or at least make him even more unpalatable to voters. Add to that the raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago, over negotiations of papers the National Archives wanted and that he was cooperating with them on. The coup attempts continue into the foreseeable future.

So, here are a few perspectives I found worth listening to this week:

·       “FBI Insider REVEALS ALL To Mr Reagan - Durham Report EXPOSED” Chris Cole interviews former FBI Agent and current state Senate candidate for Northern Virginia, Mike Van Meter, discussing the Durham Report, May 17, 2023.

·       “LIVE: Inside the New Durham Report: Where’s the Accountability?—Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke” Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders for EpochTV, May 15, 2023. 

·       “Durham Bombshell Reveals Palace Coup Against America” Joshua Philipp on Crossroads, for EpochTV, May 16, 2023.  

·       “[DS] Staged A Coup, Treason, FBI/DOJ Cleaning, The 40,000ft View Reveals The Path – Ep. 3070” X22 Report, May 16, 2023.  

·       “Durham Report EXPLAINED: Here’s EVERYTHING we learned” Glenn Beck for The Blaze, May 16, 2023.  [This is the one I reference above.]

Here’s a bonus. Glenn Beck did a special Thursday evening, called "The Reckoning." He recognizes that we’re not satisfied with what we see as crimes being committed without penalty, while unfair accusations and law-fare are being wielded against innocent people. He suggests a plan, and he starts this series with the Biden crime family. He and his research team have identified 150 crimes committed by Hunter Biden—identifying only those with rock solid evidence, ranging from drugs, guns, and prostitution, to influence peddling and tax fraud. These are undisputed and well documented. He suggests that, while we have a partisan, corrupt DOJ who won’t prosecute, those crimes were committed in various states and localities. It’s possible to prosecute at the state or local level, without having to wait for a federal prosecutor. There’s plenty of precedent with various states going after Trump on invented charges. We don’t have to invent charges or evidence; we just have to make use of the evidence.

screenshot from here

Beck has provided the documents. And he asks that we do some crowdsourcing—go through the documents, find crimes that were committed in our state or county or city, and pressure local officials to prosecute. Enough prosecutions from enough places could lead to some eventual reckoning.

The video is here: “The Reckoning: Biden Crime Family” Glenn Beck for TheBlaze, May 16, 2023. 

You can get the documents here.

The Separation

We’re in a time of the separation: wheat from tares, wheat from chaff.

Wheat (left) and tares look similar in their early stages.
image found here

There are two churches only: the church of the Lamb of God, and the church of the devil, called the great and abominable church, or the whore of all the earth, or the mother of harlots.

There’s this description: “And she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people.” 1 Nephi 14:11

That is strikingly similar to John’s description in Revelation 13: “[I] saw a beast rise up out of the sea…. And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” A couple of verses later it mentions that all the world worship this beast “whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” That is, except for those who belon to Christ, the whole world worship this beast.

Rising up from the sea, and sitting upon many waters is symbolic-speak for being spread over the whole earth. It’s everywhere.

The church of the Lamb is also all over the earth, although the numbers are small.

There are two groups only: those large numbers who worship this beast, and those, smaller in number but greater in power, who are associated with the Lamb.

There are more tares—weeds that imitate wheat in their beginning stages—than there are the fruitful grain.

In case you’re not familiar with these stories, we know the ending. The tares get separated, then gathered up and burned, while the wheat is safely collected into the garner.

While we can look and plainly see the beast, I don’t think it’s clear how everything will look as it plays out all around us—but we are in the days when it does play out. My best guess is, though, that there are going to be a fair number of people survive the destruction. The ones who have the most to worry about are those who worship devils and idols (Rev. 9:20), commit murder, sorceries (worked with evil spirits), fornication (sexual sin), and theft (Rev. 9:21).

A couple of weeks ago Glenn Beck had a conversation with Jonathan Cahn that I keep coming back to. I haven’t read the book yet, and I only know Cahn from a few podcasts. But this is fascinating. His thesis is that, if there is an exorcism of evil spirits but later they are allowed to return, they return with greater strength than before.

He believes the evil spirits—the ancient pagan gods, if you will—were exorcised from this nation at our founding, through the covenant, our Constitution, that we made with God (capital G). The gospel idea of “no respecter of persons,” i.e., equality before the law, was enshrined, and has spread around the world because of what our founders did.

But there’s this thing that John Adams said of our nation:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

We have to govern ourselves in order to have a limited government. If we don’t govern ourselves, then despotic government will assert rule over us.

We cannot be a secular nation. We need a critical mass of people who serve God and govern themselves.

If we break the covenant with God, according to Cahn, the spirits that were exorcised come back—with a vengeance. He’s not talking merely metaphorically.

In our day we tend to think ancient peoples were primitive in ways we are not. Who would bow down to a handmade statue and do ritual sacrifices to that thing and expect results from the entity it represents? Cahn is pointing out that we, modern as we are, are doing that very thing. I don’t mean we, all of us—not the wheat, but the plentiful tares.

Cahn talks about three main ancient gods, a trinity: Baal, Ashtoreth, and Moloch. There could be other names, depending on which language you’re dealing with. Ashtoreth, the female of the three, also goes by Ishtar, or Aphrodite for the Greeks. All of these gods require blood sacrifice, particularly child sacrifice. All of them encourage sexual promiscuity and deviancy. All of them promise financial reward for those who sufficiently worship them. Then they additionally have their individual attributes, symbols, and worship rites.

Are there literally gods (little g) who are being worshipped? There are only two churches, remember: the church of the Lamb, who is Christ; and the church of the devil. There is a devil. He is an entity without a body, so he’s in the spiritual realm, and during the stage of the earth’s life that we’re in he is allowed to reign in the world. He wields power and influence here—among all nations and peoples. This trinity of gods are all simply aspects of the devil. Possibly there are fallen spirits under him, of those hosts of heaven who chose to follow him in the war in heaven. But anything such spirits do will be under his domination.

The Ishtar Gate, rebuilt in modern Iraq
image found here

So, with that said, let’s take a look at the attributes of just Ashtoreth; we’ll call her Ishtar just because it’s a bit easier to say. Here are some attributes of the ancient goddess, according to Babylonian—Sumerian—writings, and maybe some other ancient sources that Cahn has used:

·        Ishtar is goddess of changing gender; women are made masculine and men are made feminine.

·        Ishtar is goddess of child sacrifice.

·        Ishtar is goddess of prostitution.

o   Greek word for prostitute is porn, or pornay, which the word pornography comes from.

·        She destroys marriage and family.

·        Ishtar is goddess of pride.

·        Ishtar is goddess of sexual parades.

·        Ishtar is goddess of ale houses, or drunkenness.

·        Ishtar’s month is June.

·        Ishtar goes into battle with her foot on the head of a lion.

·        She is the goddess of the gate; two arches in a gate are a symbol of her.

·        She is described as having rainbow eyes, so the rainbow is a symbol of her.

·        She steals things from other gods and makes them her own—example is the rainbow.

·        There’s a dance her followers do during a battle, or a riot.

·        She grinds away the masculinity of men. (Rage against the patriarchy.)

o   Take men away from marriage, men away from women, men away from being men.

o   Her priests dressed as women, spoke with women’s voices; people brought their children to the men dressed up as women, to sexualize the children (such as we see in drag queen storytime).

o   Some were castrated. Men danced before the goddess with their scalpels to celebrate their self-transformation.

Some worship is conscious; some is not. But one way or another, those who do not worship the Lamb of God are worshipping the devil, whether they know it or not.

Let’s take a look at some fairly recent history. The beginning of “gay pride month” was in New York City, at a raid of a same-sex bar called Stonewall. All the signs of Ishtar were there that night. It had two arches in front. It was next door to a bar called The Lion’s Head. There was a bar fight at Stonewall triggered by a masculine woman (lesbian). The riot got so bad, they tried to burn the place down with the police barred inside. During the riot, the people broke out in a dance, speaking the words that go back to the tablets of Ishtar. Weird.

This was the initiation of the return of Ishtar. After that bar fight, gay pride spread around the world. People celebrate gayness and pride for a whole month, with gay pride parades. Countries celebrate pride month when they don’t even celebrate their own country’s founding day—which, wherever that is celebrated is only a day, not a month. Rainbow flags flown on embassies—never has any such flag or symbol been flown at embassies.

It's not natural.

If you’re using a rainbow to show your tolerance and compassion toward LGBTQ communities, you are worshipping Ishtar, who stole that symbol from God, who had given it as a covenant to Noah that He would never again flood the earth.

Are you a wheat or a tare? It’s your choice.

Are all these signs and symbols just coincidence? One or two I might wonder, but that list is getting pretty sizable. What are the odds?

Cahn gives a few more coincidences. There were these three Supreme Court rulings:

·        2003 June 26  Lawrence v. Texas: outlawed anti-sodomy laws

·        2012 June 26  US v. Windsor: struck down Defense of Marriage Act

·        2015 June 26  Obergefell v. Hodges: struck down definition of marriage   

After giving that list, with those coincidental dates, Jonathan Cahn says, “The Supreme Court is not looking at the Babylonian calendar.”  SCOTUS does release most of their decisions by the end of June. But the exact day? 

He explains that, on the Bible calendar as well as the Babylonian calendar, what we call June 26 was the 10^th day of Tamuz. Tamuz is the month of the goddess Ishtar. (Tamuz was the name of one of her lovers that she destroyed.) According to readings in the ancient Babylonian calendar, “The 10^th of Tamuz is appointed to cast a spell to cause a man to love a man.”

After the 2015 ruling, Obama displayed a rainbow on White House—symbolically giving America over to the pagan goddess Ishtar, although of course that was not what he said it meant, only that it meant solidarity with striking down the definition of marriage to lift up gay relationships.

The White House lit with rainbow lights after the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell
image found here

The day Biden signed the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which enshrined gay marriage into law, he lit up the White House again with the rainbow. It was the 20^th of Kislev, the day mentioned in Ezra that God said he couldn’t respect a marriage. [I couldn’t find the verse he’s referencing. In the KJV, it is spelled Chisleu (elsewhere Chislev); I found that in Nehemiah 1 and Zechariah 7, but not in Ezra. Cahn likely references chapter and verse in his book.]

There’s some hopeful news to follow. Cahn tells this story. His associate pastor had a dream, didn’t know what it meant, but knew it was meant for Jonathan Cahn, so he described it to him. There were altars, and they began to break open, and all these spirits came out.

Jonathan knew it was about the book he was working on, Return of the Gods. He finished it on June 24, the very day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.  The altar (big altar of 60 million dead babies) was broken. As he put it, the word of God broke the power that evil had had.

Jonathan Cahn talks with Glenn Beck,
screenshot from here

Jonathan Cahn and Glenn Beck have a conversation toward the end about the separation of darkness and light:

JC: When the grays are disappearing, it’s time for the lights to get brighter. You know. And it’s kind of like, if the dark is removing the gray to get even darker, the light has to remove the gray to get even lighter. These are the times we have to shine even brighter.

GB: I haven’t told this for a long time. I grew up in Seattle; 310 cloudy days out of the year. I moved to Phoenix; not a cloud in the sky ever. OK. And I remember one of the first days I was there, I stood outside, and I just watched the shadow that I was casting, because it was so dark and crisp. I had never seen it. I’d always seen kind of just like a shadow here on the table, just barely there, you know, because the sun wasn’t bright. And I’ve taken that lesson my whole life as, only when the light is getting brighter is the shadow more defined and seemingly darker. But the light is there.

JC: Yeah. And that’s an encouragement that— You know, there’s kind of been a gray Christianity, because when everybody’s Christian, it doesn’t necessarily mean something. Everywhere Christian. I grew up in that culture. You….   But now it means something. It means more than it has ever meant. Now, to follow God, to follow Jesus, it’s going to cost, but it’s gonna mean— It’s more important than ever. You know, the candle in the daytime, you barely see it; the candle at night, literally lights up the world. And that’s what we’re supposed to be.

You said something very interesting, because, as you said it, I thought, OK, well, the light’s getting brighter. Well, the light’s coming. You know, we’re getting closer to that. When Hitler, when all hell broke loose on the world, Israel was coming. The prophecies were coming. All that was coming. So all hell breaks loose. So it’s a good sign. You know, we— You know, Jesus is called the Lamb of God. He’s also called the Lion of Judah. And he’s coming….

There’s another video I watched—never heard this guy, Pastor Mark Driscoll, before; he was talking about Elijah and the priests of Baal, overall, which is maybe relevant to today’s discussion, but I’m not going there. In the introductory part, he’s talking about a study from the National Library of Medicine, which came out recently (the video was posted two weeks ago). He tells us:

Epidemiological studies find a positive association between physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and witnessing violence in childhood and same-sex sexuality in adulthood.” Here’s this study, non-Christian study. Today, teens and 20-somethings that are struggling with mental illness and gender confusion, it’s because many, if not most of them, were abused and have trauma. They either were sexually abused, physically abused, or they witnessed trauma and abuse.

And so, wouldn’t the healthy thing to be say, well, if they have trauma and abuse, let’s get them some help and some healing, and see if they’re doing better, and see if they think differently? No, let’s seize their custody from their parents who can no longer care for them, and let’s mutilate them.

It’s new days, but it’s old demons.

Pastor Mark Driscoll, screenshot from here

Yes, the same old demons. Children were pretty vulnerable back in the days when adults were willing to sacrifice them to the gods. Same vulnerability today.

For those of you who resist because of your desire to support friends who face same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, are you really helping them by supporting the choices that move them away from the church of the Lamb? Wouldn’t it be better to just keep loving them, but also encourage them to get help for their trauma? (I wrote about this in more detail here; there is help available in the way of standard, recognized therapy.)

We’re in a time in which there is a separation happening. We were told the prophecy about the wheat and the tares, and we’re seeing it. But we weren’t told this because there’s no hope; we’re told this so we can choose to be wheat. If we’ve been deceived, we can get undeceived; we can repent. We can miraculously change from a tare into wheat, because God does miracles within us.

These symbolic things, as we can see from what is going on around us, are also literal.

There are only two churches: if you’re not in God’s church—written in the Lamb’s book of life—then you’re in the devil’s church. If you’re a tare, you get separated out from the harvest of the wheat and destroyed.

Knowing we have a loving God, I believe He will give every one of us as many opportunities as possible for us to choose Him. He is giving us warnings. He is giving us invitations to come unto Him—and He asks us to pass along these invitations to His lost children. Even after the destructions that await the wicked, He will preach and offer opportunities. Those who want to seek the Good but are deceived will probably find the Good at some point. But those who rebel against God and hate the Good will never be forced into loving God. They will, however, be forced to kneel and confess that He rules and reigns.

All this is to say, be wheat; be fruitful and good. Choose to belong to the church of the Lamb. If you’ve been deceived, come awake now and repent. Today is the day to allow Him to change your inner makeup from a tare into wheat, so you can be gathered in the garners rather than burned and destroyed.

Righteous Warrior

I had planned to sit down and write about something altogether different this Thursday morning. But, first thing, I heard of the death of a friend, Alan Vera. I have written about him frequently. He was the go-to guy on election integrity in the state of Texas, and particularly here in Harris County. I had his number in my phone and called him personally when I had election day questions. (If everybody did that, it’s no wonder HCRP finally got a help line for those issues.)

Alan Vera, speaking at the Cypress Texas Tea Party, November 21, 2022
screenshot from here

Alan passed away this morning, in the state capitol building, just before he was scheduled to testify on several election integrity bills. He was a fixture there during the legislative session. His knowledge and understanding on these matters is unparalleled. People across the state and the nation have been trained and educated by him. He is likely the main reason Texas didn’t allow Dominion voting machines; he showed them to be unreliable. And any good election integrity legislation on the books in Texas likely saw his hand in writing it and getting it passed.

All who knew him are stunned. They had a moment of silence in his honor in today’s hearing.

I have a number of his speeches, long and short, on my phone. I would record him, in case I wanted to quote him later, which I have often done. (See the list of times I’ve written about him below.)

Alan Vera was one of the original founders of True the Vote, along with Catherine Engelbrecht. The first time I met him was when I attended a True the Vote poll watcher training class, and he was my teacher. Hundreds, maybe thousands (I may be vastly underestimating the number), have received poll watcher training from Alan. He stayed with True the Vote until 2014, when he became the Ballot Security committee chair for the Harris County Republican Party. True the Vote is a 501(c)3, which means nonpartisan. He saw that the party needed his particular help more, and he has given that help tirelessly.

There’s a quote that I think fits Alan:

“My life is like my shoes—to be worn out in service.”[i]

I’ve worked with Alan Vera for years on the Senatorial District 7 and Texas platform committees. We didn’t hang out at each other’s houses, but I considered him, along with his wife, Colleen, to be friends. I’ve sat with them at various meetings and candidate forums, and always enjoyed our conversations. I know them to be true righteous warriors.

I will personally miss him. I have followed him on Facebook where it is not all political. He was an Army Ranger, and, as he put it, once you take the oath to protect and defend, you never stop. Almost daily he would put up a quote from Winston Churchill: "We sleep safely because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us," and below that a meme about soldiers doing their work. Here’s one he posted Tuesday.

a post on Alan Vera's Facebook page, Tuesday, May 2, 2023

One of the Vera's foster puppies
from Alan's FB page

Another main feature of his social media was letting us know the progress on their puppy rescue. He and Colleen would foster puppies who would otherwise likely be euthanized. They got them healthy and groomed and somewhat socialized, and then they would see them off on their journeys to be adopted by their “furever families.” He would post photos of them in the process, and about to leave—and on their way and at their new homes when photos got sent to him. We had a dog problem in our neighborhood a few months back; two dogs got loose and attacked our dog. This had happened multiple times recently to other families. We talked to the owner later, and they needed advice on what to do with these dogs. I called Alan, expert on dog rescues as well as election integrity. He gave advice on rescues and who to contact, which I was able to pass along.

This is something he posted last Friday, which seems so appropriate now.

a post passed along on Alan Vera's Facebook page a week ago

He also had a great, and slightly warped, sense of humor. And some of his social media posts showed that side, which was always good for a daily laugh. 

Whenever he had an important talk or training to give, he would ask for our prayers. I would stop what I was doing and pray for him.

The last time he spoke at our Cypress Texas Tea Party meeting, he said something that has stuck with me, and has maybe more meaning now. The words in quotes are his, as I quoted them here: 

“Plan A for election integrity in Texas is that 99% of all adult Texans live their lives according to traditional Judeo-Christian principles.” But the reality is, “Thousands of people across the state have consented to being human agents of powers and principalities of darkness, and are working to undermine the state and this country, which God himself founded.” So his Plan B continues to be: Deterrence, Prevention, and Real-time Intervention.

He was a warrior against those powers and principalities of darkness; he has been doing yeoman’s work here on earth in the fight. The grand story is reaching a climax. We know from scripture how the story turns out. Still, there are battles yet to be waged. Here on earth we will somehow have to continue without him, which feels daunting. But this life here is not the only place where a spiritual battle is waged. I can only assume that, at such a time as this, he was tagged for fighting in the spiritual realm, where such a man as he can be even more effective. After our eventual victory, I look forward to hearing his battle stories of how he helped us win.

 Some of My Posts that Include Wisdom from Alan Vera

·        “Election Debacle Report”—November 21, 2022 

·        “Deterrence, Prevention, and Real-Time Intervention”—July 28, 2022 

·        “Chain-of-Custody Issues"—May 12, 2022” 

·        “When Does Incompetence Become Cover for Intentional Wrongdoing?”—March 7, 2022

·        “Boring Is Good”—November 1, 2011 

·        “Being There”—September 29, 2011 

 

Videos

·        Alan Vera at Cypress Texas Tea Party November 19, 2022 

·        Alan Vera at Cypress Texas Tea Party July 23, 2022 

 

Media Stories Today

·        Harris County GOP Statement on the Passing of Longtime Activist and Ballot Security Chairman Alan Vera—May 4, 2023 

·        “Well Done, Soldier: Remembering Alan Vera” by Erin Anderson for Texas Scorecard, May 4, 2023. 

·        “Longtime Harris County GOP activist Alan Veradies before testifying at Texas Capitol” by Taylor Goldenstein for the Houston Chronicle, May 4, 2023. 

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[i] The quote is from Spencer W. Kimball, former Prophet and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as recounted by Gordon B. Hinckley, “He Is at Peace,” Ensign, December 1985, p. 41.