Democrat Russian Probe Cartoons

Dems to probe Trump's treatment of CNN, Amazon, Washington Post in triple-threaded abuse-of-power inquiries

This is why you don't vote for Democrats. They cheat, lie, steal, and sue, sue, sue.

The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee this week said that when the new Congress is seated in January, Democrats plan to scrutinize whether President Trump abused his authority by taking adverse action against retail giant Amazon and two of his bitter left-leaning media rivals: CNN and The Washington Post.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in an interview with "Axios on HBO" that he and his colleagues will employ committee subpoena powers -- which are backed by the legal threat of contempt of Congress -- to conduct the triple-threaded inquiry into Trump's possible use of the "instruments of state power to punish the press."
Specifically, Schiff charged that Trump "was secretly meeting with the postmaster [general] in an effort to browbeat" her into "raising postal rates on Amazon," whose founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, separately owns The Washington Post.
"This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post," Schiff said in the interview.
The president signed an executive order earlier this year mandating a review of what he called the "unsustainable financial path" of the United States Postal Service (USPS). And he has reportedly met with Postmaster General Megan Brennan several times to push for hikes to the shipping rates paid by companies like Amazon, although there are no indications he did so to seek political payback.
Trump has long derided the political coverage at the Post, which is fiercely and relentlessly criticial of the White House, as a lobbying tool for Bezos. Most recently, the White House has contradicted the Post's unequivocal reporting that it had shared a "doctored" video of CNN reporter Jim Acosta making contact with a White House intern during a press conference last week, as a Buzzfeed analysis suggested the changes in the video could have resulted inadvertently from the conversion of the footage to the lower-fidelity .gif format commonly used on Twitter.
But Trump has also feuded specifically with Amazon throughout the year, saying it is taking advantage of taxpayer-subsidized shipping rates.
In March, he argued in a series of tweets that the online retailer’s “scam” shipping deal with the USPS -- which affords Amazon generous discounts  -- is costing the agency “billions of dollars.”

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, speaks at The Economic Club of Washington's Milestone Celebration in Washington. (Associated Press)

While the USPS has lost money for 11 years, Trump's critics have claimed that package delivery -- which has been a relative bright spot for the service as it competes in that space with UPS and FedEx -- is not the main reason. Boosted by e-commerce, the Postal Service has experienced double-digit increases in revenue from delivering packages despite offering discounts to retailers, even as the agency is hit with significantly increased mandatory pension and health care costs, as well as precipitous declines in first-class letters and marketing mail.
But it could be that the USPS is undercharging Amazon for its services. Although federal law ostensibly requires that the USPS' deals with Amazon be at least a break-even proposition for the government, the agency's profits from parcel deliveries are difficult to accurately calculate, owing to its complicated hybrid-monopoly structure and accounting documents that raise questions as to its actual costs.
Schiff also raised the possibility that the Trump administration's opposition to AT&T's $85 billion takeover of Time Warner on antitrust grounds may have been motivated by the president's animus toward CNN, whose parent company is Time Warner. Trump frequently claims that CNN speads "fake news" and that when it does so, it is acting as the "enemy of the people."
"We don't know, for example, whether the effort to hold up the merger of the parent of CNN was a concern over antitrust, or whether this was an effort merely to punish CNN," Schiff said, without offering evidence.
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR LEGISLATIVE BATTLEGROUNDS BETWEEN DEMS, GOP IN 2019?
"It is very squarely within our responsibility to find out," Schiff said. Along with incoming House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and other top Democrats, Schiff will have a mandate to serve a slew of subpoenas on the Trump administration.
But former GOP Judiciary Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who is now a Fox News contributor, told Politico in October that Cummings and Schiff shouldn't get their hopes up.
“If [North Carolina Rep.] Mark Meadows and [Ohio Rep.] Jim Jordan can’t get documents out of the White House, I don’t know why Elijah Cummings and the Democrats think they’ll do any better,” Chaffetz said.
Still, Democrats had signaled even before last week's midterm elections that they would aggressively investigate the Trump administration if they took power in Congress. Bogging down the White House with burdensome document requests and subpoenas could indeed backfire, political analysts tell Fox News, but there is little doubt that the strategy -- made more viable by heightened partisanship and loosened congressional norms -- would impair Republicans' messaging and even policy goals for the next two years.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks to a crowd of volunteers and supporters of the Democratic party at an election night returns event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

"Well, we are responsible," House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who is campaigning to reclaim her role as House speaker, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "We are not scattershot. We are not doing any investigation for a political purpose, but to seek the truth. So I think a word that you could describe about how Democrats will go forward in this regard is we will be very strategic."
But Pelosi has previously suggested that she would, indeed, use the threat of subpoenea for political gain.
MAXINE WATERS, SCHIFF TO TAKE HIGH-PROFILE COMMITTEE POSTS IN NEW HOUSE
“Subpoena power is interesting, to use it or not to use it,” Pelosi said at a conference in October, referring to the authority of House committees to summon individuals and organizations to testify or provide documents under penalty of perjury. “It is a great arrow to have in your quiver in terms of negotiating on other subjects." She added that she would use the power "strategically." (Trump has flatly called Pelosi's plan "illegal.")
Pelosi's approach would mark the continuation of a trend. Research conducted by Cornell University political science professor Douglas Kriner, who co-wrote the 2016 book "Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power," underscores the increasingly political nature of House investigations.
"We examined every congressional investigation from 1898 to 2014 – more than 11,900 days of investigative hearings," Kriner told Fox News. "What we found is that divided government is a major driver of investigations in the House. This is particularly true in periods of intense partisan polarization. For example, from 1981-2014, the House averaged holding 67 days of investigative hearings per year in divided government, versus only 18 per year in unified government."
Kriner added that modern congressional probes seem geared toward "maximiz[ing] the political damage on the White House," rather than producing more substantive results. "Investigations are less likely to trigger new legislation than in previous, less polarized eras," Kriner told Fox News.
On Election Day, Pelosi vowed to “restor[e] the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration" by enhancing transparency and accountability. But Trump last week signaled he had no patience for that approach, which he characterized as an expensive folly.
"If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!" Trump tweeted.

Dem-leaning Palm Beach County says it likely won't make recount deadline in Florida governor, Senate races

The supervisor of elections in Florida's heavily Democratic Palm Beach County said Sunday that she did not believe her department would meet a Thursday deadline to complete recounts in the Sunshine State's historically tight gubernatorial and Senate races, threatening to further confuse an increasingly chaotic and politically fraught process.
The supervisor, Susan Bucher, told reporters that she did not expect to meet the deadline due to aging equipment. Florida Department of State spokeswoman Sarah Revell told Fox News that under state law, if a county does not submit their results by the deadline, then the results on file at the time take their place. Revell added that Florida's Secretary of State has no authority to grant extensions.
"Supervisors of Elections are independent officials and they are responsible for deciding when to upgrade or modernize their equipment," Revell added.
The recount in most other major population centers, including Miami-Dade and Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in the Tampa Bay area, were taking place without incident on Sunday. Smaller counties are expected to begin their reviews Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.
Bucher spoke hours after the campaign of Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott -- which secured an early legal victory against Democratic-leaning Broward County officials over the weekend -- went back to court with a fresh salvo of emergency complaints against both Broward and Palm Beach counties. One complaint requests that state sheriff's officers "impound and secure all voting machines, tallying devices and ballots when they are not in use until the conclusion of the recount."
In a separate lawsuit, Scott's team is asking a judge to throw out votes tallied by the Broward County Canvassing Board after Saturday's noon deadline, in apparent violation of state law, which requires that "[t]he canvassing board shall submit ... unofficial returns to the Department of State for each federal, statewide, state, or multicounty office or ballot measure no later than ... noon on the fourth day after any general or other election."
“The Broward and Palm Beach County Supervisors of Elections has already demonstrated a blatant disregard for Florida’s elections laws, making it more important than ever that we continue to do everything possible to prevent fraud and ensure this recount is operated responsibly," Chris Hartline, a Scott spokesman, said in a statement.
Lawyer Marc Elias, who is representing the campaign of Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, fired back on Twitter.
"Lets [sic] be clear about what we are witnessing in Florida," Elias wrote. "The sitting Governor is seeking to throw out lawful votes and seize the voting equipment in order to win an election."
"Somebody needs to cut down on the Red Bull," a Scott spokesperson wrote on Twitter, in response to a statement by Florida Democrats Executive Director Juan Penalosa that compared Scott to a Latin American dictator. "We requested that ballots and voting machines be protected when not in use. The only reason not to protect the integrity of the ballots and the voting machines is if you are actively promoting or hoping for fraud."
But Democrats continued to bash the Republican's effort. "If Rick Scott wanted to make sure every legal ballot is counted, he would not be suing to try and stop voters from having their legal ballot counted as intended," Nelson said in a statement. "He's doing this for the same reason he's been making false and panicked claims about voter fraud -- he's worried that when all the votes are counted he'll lose this election. We will not allow him to undermine the democratic process and will use every legal tool available to protect the rights of Florida voters."
Unofficial results show that Republican former Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by 0.41 percentage points in the election for governor. In the Senate race, Scott's lead over Nelson is 0.14 percentage points. State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. Once completed, if the differences in any of the races are 0.25 percentage points or below, a hand recount will be ordered.
The litigation threw yet another wrench in an increasingly chaotic process reminiscent of the 2000 presidential election recount fiasco. In Broward County, the scheduled start of the recount was delayed Sunday because of a problem with one of the tabulation machines. The Republican Party accused Broward's supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, of continuing to compromise the process with "incompetence and gross mismanagement" following the delay, which was resolved within two hours.

Election workers place ballots into electronic counting machines, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018, at the Broward Supervisor of Elections office in Lauderhill, Fla. The Florida recount began Sunday morning in Broward County. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Broward County election planning director Joe D'Alessandro told Fox News that machines in Broward are currently resorting some 3.5 million pages of ballots, and officials said that process could take more than 30 hours alone before any actual counting begins.
Broward County, the state's second-most populous, is emerging as the epicenter of controversy in the recount. Broward officials said they mistakenly counted 22 absentee ballots that had been rejected, mostly because the signature on the return envelope did not match the one on file.

Brenda Snipes, Broward County supervisor of elections, speaks with officials before a canvassing board meeting Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla. (AP Photo/Joe Skipper)

It is a problem that appears impossible to fix because the ballots were mixed in with 205 legal ballots. Snipes, who has long been accused of mismanaging county elections and has been sanctioned by a judge for destroying ballots in a 2016 congressional race, said it would be unfair to throw out all the ballots.
"#BrowardElections office admits the vote count they submitted to state includes 22 illegal votes," Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio wrote on Twitter Sunday. "We know about these 22 because they got caught breaking law in reviewing 202 ballots. How can anyone trust more illegal votes aren’t in their final count?"

Election workers place ballots into electronic counting machines, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018, at the Broward Supervisor of Elections office in Lauderhill, Fla. The Florida recount began Sunday morning in Broward County. (Joe Cavaretta /South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Undervoting -- a phenomenon in which voters don't cast votes in all the races on the ballot -- has become a prominent issue in the race. Rubio pointed out that Broward County is showing that approximately 25,000 fewer votes were cast in the Senate race than the gubernatorial contest -- a significant undervote that could be explained by Snipes' ballot design, which placed the Senate contest directly below the ballot's instructions, out of line with other races.
In 2006, the last time Nelson was on the ballot alongside a gubernatorial race, only 4,100 fewer people in Broward voted in the Senate race than in the election for governor. (However, at the statewide level this year, 34,051 fewer people voted in the Senate race than the gubernatorial race, a lower figure than the 35,736 undervote in 2006 -- even though 3 million more votes were cast in 2018 compared to 2006.)
"How ironic would it be if those who are now bashing our criticism of Snipes in the end wind up arguing that a ballot design error made by her is the reason the Democrats lost?" Rubio said Sunday.
Other Republicans suggested that Democrats shouldn't get their hopes up as the recounts get underway.

A crowd protests outside the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla. A possible recount looms in a tight Florida governor, Senate and agriculture commission race. (AP Photo/Joe Skipper)

"Scott trails DeSantis by 10,754 votes in Broward, and Nelson trails Gillum by 10,343," a Scott campaign source told Fox News. "The idea that the undervotes in Broward County is an opportunity for Nelson to significantly close the gap is not and has never been based on anything but fantasy."
The recount in most other major population centers, including Miami-Dade and Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in the Tampa Bay area, was ongoing without incident on Sunday. Smaller counties are expected to begin their reviews Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.
Republicans have repeatedly cried foul throughout the process, both in court and outside Florida election offices. On Saturday, GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz compared Broward County to a "banana republic" and posted video apparently showing him being denied access to election facilities on "safety" grounds.
Protesters chanted, "Lock her up" outside the building earlier in the day, referring to Snipes.
Rubio and other Florida officials have posted numerous videos and images on social media apparently showing boxes of ballots being left behind in public spaces or improperly loaded onto private trucks.
At an emergency court hearing on Friday, state Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips ruled there has “been a violation of the Florida Constitution,” as well as the state’s public records act, by Broward officials who had not turned over requested records about the number of votes to be counted. But, Gaetz said, Florida officials were still blocking Republicans from monitoring how they were handling boxes of ballots.
"We have very specific laws in the state to try to prevent fraud," Scott, the incumbent Florida governor, told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace. "We had to go to court to force the supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County and Broward County to comply with the law, which is there to prevent fraud."
Scott added: "Sen. Nelson is clearly trying to commit fraud to win this election, that’s all this is." Asked to elaborate on his accusation, he replied, "Well, it's his team."

"Sen. Nelson is clearly trying to commit fraud to win this election."
— GOP Senate candidate Rick Scott

"His lawyers said that a noncitizen should vote, that’s one," Scott continued. "Two, he’s gone to trial and said that fraudulent ballots should be counted, ballots have already been thrown out because they were not done properly. He said those should be counted."
JUDGE SIDES WITH RICK SCOTT, REPUBLICANS, ORDERS FLORIDA ELECTION OFFICIALS TO COMPLY WITH LAW
Lawyers for Nelson and Gillum on Friday had objected to the rejection of a provisional ballot cast by a noncitizen, according to a transcript obtained by Fox News.
The incident occurred during a canvassing meeting in Palm Beach County, where provisional ballots were being examined. According to the draft transcript of the meeting, taken by a court reporter hired by the Florida Republican Party, a provisional ballot was ordered excluded from the count, as it came from a non-U.S. citizen.
The Nelson campaign distanced itself from the objections, which it said that it had not authorized.
The recount reviews are an unprecedented step in Florida, a state that's notorious for election results decided by the thinnest of margins. State officials said they weren't aware of any other time either a race for governor or U.S. Senate in Florida required a recount, let alone both in the same election.

Broward County Supervisor of Elections Dr. Brenda Snipes, gives an update on the progress of ballots that are being counted from the midterm election Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Snipes, the Broward County election supervisor who has held her office since 2003, is no stranger to controversy. Earlier this year, Scott's administration said it was monitoring her office after a judge ruled in May the county broke federal law by destroying ballots in Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's 2016 Democratic primary race against Tim Canova, Politico reported.
Snipes claimed the issue had been "blown out of proportion."
In August, a judge sided with the Florida GOP in its challenge of how the county handled absentee ballots. Republicans claimed Snipes' office was opening ballots in private, preventing people from challenging if they were properly cast, according to Politico.
And then in 2016, Broward County violated the law when it posted early voting results online before polls even closed, the Miami Herald reported.

A crowd protests outside the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla. Florida is once again at the center of election controversy, but this year there are no hanging chads or butterfly ballots like in 2000. And no angry mobs in suits, at least not yet. (AP Photo/Joe Skipper)

TRUMP 'WATCHING CLOSELY' WHAT HAPPENS IN FLORIDA, SAYS DEMS TRYING TO STEAL ELECTIONS
As the recount unfolded, Republicans urged their Democratic opponents to give up and allow the state to move on.
Both the state elections division, which Scott runs, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have said they have found no evidence of voter fraud. Gillum and Nelson have argued each vote should be counted and the process allowed to take its course.
Florida is also conducting a recount in a third statewide race. Democrat Nikki Fried had a 0.07 percentage point lead over Republican state Rep. Matt Caldwell in the race for agriculture commissioner, one of Florida's three Cabinet seats.
From a distant glance, the recounts might dredge up memories of the 2000 presidential recount, when it took more than five weeks for Florida to declare George W. Bush the winner over Al Gore by 537 votes, thus giving Bush the presidency.
But much has changed since then. In 2000, each county had a separate voting system. Many used punch cards — voters poked out chads, leaving tiny holes in their ballots representing their candidates. Some voters, however, didn't fully punch out the presidential chad or gave it just a little push. Those hanging and dimpled chads had to be examined by the canvassing boards, a lengthy, tiresome and often subjective process that became fodder for late-night comedians.
Now the state requires that all Florida counties use ballots where voters use a pen to fill in a circle next to their candidate's name, much like a student does when taking a multiple-choice test. It also now clearly mandates how the recount will proceed.
Those ballots are now being run through scanning machines in each county for a second time under the watchful eye of representatives of both parties and the campaigns. Any ballot that cannot be read for any of the recounted races will be put aside.
If a race's statewide margin falls below 0.25 percentage points after the machine count, the state will order a manual recount in each county. At that point, only the rejected ballots for that race will be examined by counting teams to determine if the voters' intentions were obvious. For example, some voters circle the candidate's name instead of filling in the ballot correctly and some cross out their vote and then mark another candidate.
If either side objects to a counting team's decision or the team can't make one, the ballot will be forwarded to the county's canvassing board, with the three members voting on the final decision. The members are usually the county supervisor of elections, a judge and the chair of the county commissioners.

Mark Penn, Andrew Stein: Yes, Hillary Clinton will run again -- Here's how she'll easily win the nomination

Get ready for Hillary Clinton 4.0. More than 30 years in the making, this new version of Mrs. Clinton, when she runs for president in 2020, will come full circle—back to the universal-health-care-promoting progressive firebrand of 1994. True to her name, Mrs. Clinton will fight this out until the last dog dies. She won’t let a little thing like two stunning defeats stand in the way of her claim to the White House.
It’s been quite a journey. In July 1999, Mrs. Clinton began her independent political career on retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s farm in upstate New York. Her Senate platform included support for a balanced budget, the death penalty, and incremental health care reform. It was a decisive break from her early-1990s self. Hillary Clinton 2.0 was a moderate, building on the success of her communitarian “It Takes a Village” appeals and pledging to bring home the bacon for New York. She emphasized her religious background, voiced strong support for Israel, voted for the Iraq war, and took a hard line against Iran.
This was arguably the most successful version of Hillary Clinton. She captured the hearts and minds of New York’s voters and soared to an easy re-election in 2006, leaving Bill and all his controversies behind.
But Hillary 2.0 could not overcome Barack Obama, the instant press sensation. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton held fast to centrist positions that would have assured her victory in the general election. But progressive leaders and donors abandoned her for the antiwar Mr. Obama. Black voters who had been strong Clinton supporters in New York and Arkansas left her column to elect the first African-American president. History was made, but not by Mrs. Clinton. Though she won more delegates from Democratic primaries, activists in caucus states gave Mr. Obama, who had called her “likable enough,” the heartbreaking win.

Abrams’ campaign files federal lawsuit in hopes to force runoff

Stacey Abrams' campaign on Sunday filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to delay vote certifications in Georgia’s unsettled governor's race by one day and block counties from tossing some provisional and absentee ballots that may have minor mistakes on them.
Brian Kemp, her Republican challenger, issued a statement a day earlier calling for Abrams to concede. Kemp has declared victory and said it is "mathematically impossible" for her campaign to force a runoff.
Fox 5 Atlanta reported that Kemp is up by 59,000 votes. Kemp had 50.2 percent of the vote by early Monday.
Abrams, 44, has maintained that she will not concede until every vote has been counted, and pointed to the 5,000 votes tallied over the weekend that favored her. The Washington Post reported that she would need 21,700 additional votes to force a runoff.
The suit, if successful, would prevent officials from certifying county vote totals until Wednesday and could restore at least 1,095 votes that weren't counted. The campaign said thousands of more ballots could be affected.

"The bottom line is this race is not over. It is still too close to call, and we do not have confidence in the secretary of state’s office."
— Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams’ campaign manager

Kemp's campaign did not have any immediate comment on the lawsuit, according to the station. The suit was filed over alleged problems in Democratic-favoring Gwinnett and DeKalb counties in metro Atlanta.
Dara Lindenbaum, a lawyer for Abrams’ campaign, said the suit intends to stop ballots with minor mistakes -- like the voter writing the day they filled out the ballot as their date of birth -- from being rejected.
But Kemp aides previously said Abrams has no path to victory and called her refusal to concede a "disgrace to democracy."
Each of Georgia's 159 counties must certify final returns by Tuesday, and many have done so already. Abrams hopes to delay the certification until Wednesday. The state must certify a statewide result by Nov. 20.
Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams’ campaign manager, told the Post, "The bottom line is this race is not over. It is still too close to call, and we do not have confidence in the secretary of state’s office."
Abrams hopes to become the nation's first black woman elected governor, while Kemp is trying to maintain GOP dominance in a diversifying state that could be important in the presidential election in two years.
"So her margin in those uncounted votes needs to be really high," Jeffrey Lazarus, who teaches political science at Georgia State University, said Sunday in an interview conducted by email. "To put it simply, she's running out of votes."
The Associated Press has not declared a winner.
Allegations by Abrams supporters of voter suppression, long voting lines and other balloting problems are hard to ignore given Kemp's "aggressively partisan conduct as secretary of state," said Michael Kang, who teaches election law at Northwestern University's law school.
"That said, I think the Abrams campaign still faces an uphill battle in first convincing a court about the need for a recount and second, having the recount net enough votes to force a runoff. As a general matter, recounts rarely end up changing the outcomes of elections," Kang, who previously taught at Emory University in Atlanta, said in an email interview to the Associated Press.

Veterans Day Cartoons

World War I centennial: US author honors grandfather by returning key taken from France 100 years ago

U.S. Army Private 1st Class Raymond W. Maker, left, and the key he says he took from Verdun, France, around the end of World War I. His grandson, Bruce Norton, is in France today to return the key back to the town.

One hundred years ago on this date, U.S. Army Private 1st Class Raymond W. Maker wrote in his diary “today is one of the happiest days of my life."
“The War is off, thank God. And all the boys have gone about half mad with joy. Bands are playing all day and at night all kinds of flares in the sky,” he beamed, capturing the relief felt among Allied forces as World War I officially came to an end.
It was a thrilling moment for Maker who, during the war, had been hit with mustard gas from the German army, wounded by artillery fire during the Muese-Argonne offensive – the deadliest battle in U.S. military history – and later went on to earn a Purple Heart for his service.
And now, a century later, on this Veterans Day – marking the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended The Great War – his grandson, Bruce Norton, is in France retracing Maker’s footsteps and honoring him by returning a key his grandfather took during the war. Norton is joining the many Americans remembering the heroics of family members from generations past.
“My grandfather never spoke about the war to me, and it was only after his death that war stories were told at family gatherings about his service in France,” Norton, a former Marine and military author who is writing a book about Maker’s service, told Fox News.
The upcoming book, titled “Letters of a Yankee Doughboy,” contains more than 120 letters Maker wrote from the front lines of the war to his family in Framingham, Mass.

Maker would often write home to his family during World War I. He is pictured here as a young boy, on the far right of the bottom row. To his side, from right to left, are his stepsister Harriet, sister Eva and brother Clifford (Kip). His uncle Edward, wearing a Union Army uniform, is second from the left in the middle row, next to Edward's brother, Andrew. Both of those men fought for 19th Maine Regiment during the Civil War. Maker's father, Winfield, is standing in front of the bicycle on the far right. (Courtesy Bruce Norton)

Norton said he was given the letters in a box in 1992 while visiting his mother in Rhode Island. But something else inside that box became integral to his current trip to France this Veterans Day – a key that Maker took from a gate in the town of Verdun shortly after the war ended, which Norton is returning today to its rightful home.
“All I want to do is correct a wrong,” he told Fox News.
The story of how the iron key ended up in Norton’s possession began in 1914, when Maker joined the Massachusetts National Guard. Three years later, his unit was activated and became the U.S. Army’s 26th Infantry Division, which set off to France and encountered heavy combat.
“I hope that it won’t be so very long before I see you all again and do not lose heart if you do not hear from me very often because I may be in places where I cannot get a chance to write but will every time I can,” Maker wrote home on Oct. 6, 1917, in one of his first letters to his sister, addressed to “My Dear Eva & all the folks.”

One of the letters Maker wrote. (Courtesy Bruce Norton)

Over the next few years, Maker would – sometimes on a daily basis – pen letters to his family describing his World War I exploits as a wireman, who Norton says would “go out after these barrages and string communication wire between positions.” He also kept a diary with shorter entries.
“The fellow that was with me and myself laid in a large shell hole for about 30 hours running a telephone station, and then we got out and we went into the woods and found a dugout, and being about all in, we fell right to sleep and then the Boche started shooting over gas,” Maker wrote to his brother Kip on July 27, 1918, recalling the moments he was gassed by the Germans in France.
“We did not hear the shells and a fellow came running in with his mask on and yelled, “Gas, Gas.” Well, Kip, we put on our masks but a little too late because it had gotten us before, while we were asleep. And if that fellow had not yelled when he did, I would not be writing to you now, I guess,” he added.

Maker mentions the key he took from Verdun in a letter to his sister, Eva. (Courtesy Bruce Norton)

Maker mentioned in his writings about being in Verdun in November of that year, the same month of his 26th birthday and the signing of the armistice. He noted in a past letter of his travels about amassing a “pile” of German helmets from the battlefields and a “lot of German stuff,” but it wasn’t until January 1919 that he made mention in his writings of the key from Verdun.
“I got a letter from Kip a day ago and he said you got the helmet OK. Was there a key in the helmet? If there was don’t lose it because I stoled it out of the north gate at Verdun and it is worth something,” Maker wrote to Eva.
A 1956 article by the Providence Sunday Journal, reprinted in a draft version of Norton's book and provided to Fox News, references the key and further explains that “besides being six inches long and heavy, [it] has the added value of belonging to the historic North Gate of the Verdun Citadel where the German advance was squelched.”
The article makes mention of a Mrs. Charles A. Post, a Rhode Island resident who traveled to Verdun that year to return the key she received from Maker, who in response was given “an official certificate from the senator-mayor of Verdun for this unexpected addition to the battle site’s historic collection.”

Norton was able to learn more about his grandfather's life through the dispatches that were sent home from the front lines. (Courtesy Bruce Norton)

Except, decades later, Norton says he found out the events described in that article were not all that it seemed.
In an excerpt of Norton’s book, he writes “in October, 1992, during a visit to Rhode Island, my mother brought out a box from within her closet and said, “I have some things I want you to have. Here are all of your grandfather’s letters from World War One, and this is the key to the North Gate of Verdun, France, the one that Daddy mailed back to Aunt Eva.
“In 1956, your grandfather gave a key to a lady, a Mrs. Post, who was traveling back to France and she presented that key to the mayor of Verdun, but what she did not know was the key that Daddy gave to her was an ornate iron key a friend of his had made by the Providence Casting Company in North Providence,” the excerpt adds.
The real key presumably exchanged hands amongst Maker’s family members in the years following World War I. Maker died in 1964 after a severe heart attack and stroke. It is not immediately clear today where the gate stood in Verdun in which the key was taken from.

The key will be accepted today at the Verdun Memorial in France.

But Norton is now meeting today with Thierry Hubscher, the director of the Verdun Memorial, to return it, a spokesperson there confirmed to Fox News.  The Memorial says it may put the key into an exhibit about the Americans’ arrival in the region.
“We are particularly honored that Major Bruce Norton chose our establishment for the symbolic return of the key to an important site of the town of Verdun,” Hubscher told Fox News in an email. “This story is absolutely incredible. This key will have taken a journey of over 10,000 kilometers before coming back to its place of origin 100 years later.”

World leaders gather in Paris a century after WWI armistice

President Trump, first lady Melania Trump, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018 in Paris. (Associated Press).

President Trump joined French leader Emmanuel Macron on Sunday as nearly 70 world leaders gathered in Paris to mark 100 years since the end of World War I.
Trump was accompanied by first lady Melania Trump at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the base of the Arc de Triomphe. The president also was to attend a leaders' lunch hosted by Macron.
Afterward, Trump planned to visit and deliver Veterans Day remarks at the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial outside Paris where more than 1,500 Americans who died during the war are buried.
Rain on Saturday forced the cancellation of Trump's helicopter trip to a different American cemetery in France.
France, the epicenter of the first global conflict, was hosting the main international commemoration, pressing home the point that the world mustn't stumble into war again, as it did so quickly and catastrophically with World War II.
The world leaders were scheduled to gather at precisely 11 a.m. Paris time, the moment of the cease-fire -- but apparently arrived a bit late, the Associated Press reported.

A cemetery employee walks between graves of American service members killed during  World War I at the American Cemetery in Suresnes, on the outskirts of Paris, Nov. 9, 2018.  (Associated Press)

On the other side of the globe, the first countries and territories to see the dawn kicked off the commemorations, pushing for peace with the simple act of recalling how the 1914-1918 war killed and wounded soldiers and civilians in unprecedented numbers and in gruesome new, mechanized ways.
Australia and New Zealand lost tens of thousands of people on foreign fields far away in Europe and, most memorably in the brutal 1915 battle of Gallipoli in Turkey. Both commemorated their dead Sunday.
In Paris, the jewel that Germany sought to capture in 1914 but which the Allies fought successfully to defend, commemorations were centered around the Arc de Triomphe, where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier represents the sacrifice of all those who gave their lives.