Is it election fraud or otherwise against the law to call a leaked caucus hotline being used for election? Part of the media's narrative for the Iowa caucus is that pro-Trump pranksters/trolls from 4chan prank called the Iowa caucus locked up the phone lines preventing the redundant system from assisting when the app failed. If a number is released online expressly for the purpose of phoning in election results, And, if you knew that and intentionally tried to lock up the line Did you commit a criminal act, and can you be changed?
There seems to be no current applicable prohibition state law in Iowa in Iowa Code 39A, the Election Misconduct and Penalties Act. It is also not at all clear that precinct caucuses count as "elections" as applicable to the sections with criminal prohibitions (the precinct caucus does not appear to constitute a "primary election" under Iowa law).
You'd have to specify the cases you want. All court transcripts are a matter of public record, though a copy may cost you a fee from the court clerk's office to recieve. It should be pointed out that not all cases got to an evidentiary stage to actually evaluate on the record any evidence. A vast majority were decided on pre-evidentiary rules such as standing or laches (timeliness) and not all cases that were able induced evidence debunked the evidence. Any appellent case would also not induce evidence as all appeals cases are strictly matter of law rather than matter of fact (evidence), so those cases would be asking a higher court to double check non-evidentiary decisions. The fact that the party that brought the suit does not have standing to bring the suit OR that the party that brought the suit brought it too late for the courts to proceed on the matter does not debunk evidence that the fraud happened in the eyes of the law... it simply means the questions of fact were never addressed at all
This question and many related ones are analysed in detail by Eugene Volokh, in a long paper that is worth reading in its entirety if you are interested in the topic. The [Supreme] Court has offered “speech integral to [illegal] conduct” as one of the “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech” excluded from First Amendment protection. But if this exception is indeed to be well defined and narrowly limited, courts need to explain and cabin its scope. This Article — the first, to my knowledge, to consider the exception in depth — aims to help with that task. On threats, he says: Companies are generally barred from firing employees for voting for a union, and unions are generally barred from retaliating against employees for their speech. The Court therefore concluded that speech that threatens unlawful retaliation is itself unlawful. On blackmail, he says: [...] telling black citizens “stop shopping at white-owned stores or we’ll publicize your behavior to your neighbors and fellow church members” is similarly constitutionally protected. On the other hand, “vote for this civil rights bill or I’ll disclose that you cheated on your wife” is likely unprotected. In general the line where the First Amendment protections end and criminal speech begins is surprisingly vague. General advice to avoid self-incrimination by not answering questions from the police is clearly protected. Threatening a witness with violence is clearly not. In between are shades of grey.
My understanding is that the syndicate would be committing an act of extortion. Under the RICO Act, IF the politician conspired with the syndicate OR IF the politician had something like an 'understanding' with the syndicate, then they (any, and all involved) could be charged with the crime (extortion), racketeering and conspiracy. Additional crimes/laws to consider: Campaign finance violations Money laundering Compelled speech (1st Amendment)
47 USC 227 forbids anyone to make any call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party) using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice...to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call, unless such call is made solely to collect a debt owed to or guaranteed by the United States where an automatic dialing system is equipment which has the capacity— (A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and (B) to dial such numbers. This prohibition covers voice calls, SMS and MMS, see Satterfield v. Simon &amp; Schuster, Van Patten v. Vertical Fitness and Facebook v. Duguid. I assume that the messages are send automatically, not by hiring hundreds of people to enter numbers and send individual texts. Since businesses have been sued for doing this, a lawsuit is one of the consequences.
If I want to protest for or against President Trump and decide to wear a Trump mask, isn't that speech protected by the first amendment? Probably. The matter of intent, in any event, is for a court to decide (if the prosecutor determines that the question should even be presented to a court). For example, someone seeking to rob a bank in a mask would probably fall afoul of this law, and it's not likely that using a mask of a political figure would enable a successful first-amendment defense. For a political protestor, it could be easy to show that the intent was to make a political statement and not to conceal identity, in which case it would not be necessary to consider the constitutional question, for a critical element of the crime would be missing. That is, if you say "I wasn't trying to hide my identity," and the court believes you, then you haven't violated the statute. That is a separate question from whether the statute is constitutional. For the law itself to be unconstitutional, it would have to be unconstitutional in every application, generally. If some applications of the law are unconstitutional, the law could stand, but prosecutions for the unconstitutional application would not succeed.
The picture shown is not fraudulent or problematic. Fraud involves using a false representation (or concealing a fact) in order to obtain a result that would not have been possible to secure without the misstatement or concealment. No one is using the photograph of the exterior of a passport (which is identical for all U.S. passports) to obtain any immigration benefit or for a non-U.S. citizen to obtain citizenship. All that is being done is visually associating international travel (which would usually be done using a passport) with a credit card that can be used internationally. Since a passport is a federal government document, it is also not protected by trademark or copyright laws -- the exterior, generic design of a passport is in the public domain. It can't be used for a purpose to mislead someone about citizenship or immigration benefits, but otherwise, it can be used for any purpose. I suppose that you could be interpreting the photograph (on a Spanish language speaker's facebook feed) as implying that by getting this credit card you will also get a U.S. passport and cool sunglasses, but that would be a patently unreasonable assumption in this context, particularly in light of the clarifying caption at the bottom, and, of course, many people who speak Spanish as a primary language have legitimate U.S. passports (including more or less all passport holders in Puerto Rico). You could also, I suppose, be interpreting the appearance of the passport as some sort of implicit government endorsement of the product when the government does not, in fact, endorse the product, but again, nothing in the advertisement that I can see that can be reasonably interpreted as conveying that message.
From what I can see on the USPTO registry, &quot;tweet&quot; is still not trademarked for the purposes you're talking about. Twitter has been working to secure that trademark, but I can't find any record of them having actually secured it. Just the same, I'd predict that using it will get you at least a cease-and-desist letter, and possibly a lawsuit. Whether you'd win that case seems to be a very open question, but that presumes you have the resources to litigate.