Part 132: Was the 2024 Election Hacked? Dangerous Lawfare in Bizarre Times

Published November 24, 2025.

Nov 24, 2024

Photo of Gabrieleño Kizh nation members during Native American Heritage Month celebration at Los Angeles City Hall on November 22 by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black)

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

I’ve tried to ignore this discussion; much like the Substack Nazis, the risk in going down the proverbial rabbit hole is that you will simply spread further misinformation. Despite this, across multiple platforms, seemingly left-wing conspiracy theories have been percolating. I write this as a whistleblower and journalist who for many months now has sought to deal with actual hacking, the LA Fed Tapes, with contingent criminal and civil case investigations. Now for starters, I think the Substack Nazis have all but won; if ever there was an American president who seemingly worshipped Adolf Hitler, it’s definitely Donald Trump. Don’t get me started, and yet, absent compelling evidence that Donald Trump and Elon Musk actively conspired to manipulate swing-state election outcomes as is being alleged, I’m not quite buying it. That’s not to say that law enforcement is always trustworthy either, and some people give whistleblowing a bad name versus simply spreading baseless rumors. So what’s the truth? Does it pass the test?

To be fair, at the core of this allegation are concerning activities. Elon Musk offering a “$1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes” should have been shutdown harder than the Federal Bureau of Investigation went after former Los Angeles County Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas for bribery and fraud. Plus, Elon Musk is now seemingly being rewarded with the creation of a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which promises to be just about anything but that, paired with Vivek Ramaswamy, an equally noxious figure. Moreover, conspiracy theories have spread popularly regarding Musk’s Starlink communications technology interfering with election results that are seemingly divorced from reality. The Rolling Stone article on this characterized this as "BlueAnon,” with journalist Miles Klee characterizing this in comparison to “QAnon,” writing: “And while certain clickbait accounts used Harris’ diminished turnout compared to Biden’s to suggest that Trump cheated this time around, right-wing misinformation peddlers used it to retroactively argue that 2020 must have been stolen from Trump.”

Ah, the age of information warfare to the max. Strangely, information warfare works, as does abusing the legal system; in what I recently learned, some are calling it lawfare, which has an international component in common discourse but also can be applied to internal politics. Who says you can’t reach an old dog new tricks? In this case, Elon Musk clearly is already seeking a benefit, at least in terms of publicity, even as Twitter, now known as X, has shed users at a rate riveled perhaps only by the meltdowns at the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post over their non-endorsements. Ironically, Brazil, the Southern American nation, not the nuts, has been leading the fight against Musk’s lawfare model by regulating misinformation much as California has sought to do so against election deepfakes. Brazilian first lady Janja Lula da Silva after joking about Elon Musk sounding like a horn, said, “I’m not afraid of you, f**k you, Elon Musk.”

For their part, Musk’s X is now suing California over its efforts, as reported in the Los Angeles Times by journalist Queenie Wong over Assembly Bill 2655, with Attorney General Rob Bonta vowing to defend it in court. Another California law, Assembly Bill 2839, would have probably blocked Musk’s lottery gambit in forbidding “the distribution of deceptive campaign ads or ‘election communication’ within 120 days of an election.” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner had called the move “a gift,” with winners of Musk’s lottery coming from his state as well as “Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan,” according to the Associated Press Report by journalist Maryclaire Dale, with winners supposedly set to receive their money before November 30. Musk has already moved to brand DOGE with the crypo corgi, and not in a cuddly way. The question must be, if there were an investigation into whether anything illegal occurred, much like the inconclusive probe of Robert Mueller into Russian election interference, would it even matter? The Supreme Court has all but granted Donald Trump immunity already. Has the rise of fascism in America rendered lawfare useless?

Moreover, is the fascistic nature and approach of Trumpism so sturdy that it can’t be cracked? Already you have to be wondering if Donald Trump will respect the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would term limit him out in 2028. Given that Trump has shown absolutely no respect for the law, isn’t his campaign in and of itself essentially lawfare, not just against the “deep state” but against the government itself? Even as California and Brazil, strange companies, try to Trump-proof, much less Musk-proof, their politics and economies, the question over where this is all going remains. Duke University professor Charles Dunlap wrote in his 2015 conceptualization of lawfare about those who “threaten, manipulate, and disrupt” court proceedings: “Denying the ability to try to use this kind of lawfare technique to defang a violent adversary is not just puzzling; it is counterproductive.” After all, if lawfare is essentially bullying, how do you stop it, and moreover, is Trump not just like, say, Theodore Roosevelt, an iconclast as his supporters maintain, as opposed to being anti-constituional as critics claim?

Some have also sought to compare Trump to Grover Cleveland, except it’s hard to imagine Teddy Roosevelt or Grover Cleveland directing his followers to storm the U.S. Capitol, much less proclaiming, “You won’t have to vote anymore” and insisting he never should have left office. Supporters have defended Trump’s theatrics, but are they really political theater, or does he literally mean these things? At this point, it’s difficult to conclude that Trump doesn’t mean it. So would it be justified to engage in lawfare to defang Trump from taking office, much less ensuring that he vacates it? In the late days of the election, there was an active debate about whether the media had simply engaged in sane-washing in regards to Trump. Analyzing the debate, Jon Allsop in Columbia Journalism Review simply concluded: “To whatever extent journalists show people Trump’s unadulterated speech, it will always be part of our job to describe it.” Whatever pea brain is going on inside his head, it’s simply hooked up to the world’s biggest speaker in a way that has little to do with meeting the promise of America as a democracy. Many proclaimed that democracy was on the ballot, but seemingly fascism was chosen by the majority absent a recount or an investigation that would force such an action.

Most importantly, wouldn’t it be dangerous to resist the Donald Trump administration? In Los Angeles, an assortment of left-wing groups are already planning to assemble on January 20 at 2:00 pm at City Hall under the banner “We Fight Back.” Whether a large crowd builds will be subject to date, because by and large the American public is taking this more in stride than they did in 2016 when Donald Trump was first elected. This all goes back to reality perception, and at least in Los Angeles, the press seems to not just be intimidated, but in fact, be potentially comprised as an anti-corruption tool. Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who declared before the election that he was maintaining neutrality out of some higher sense, now is openly endorsing Trump’s and Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s selections—all of whom are MDs”—to leadership positions in key agencies that influence the health of all Americans…FDA, CMS, and CDC,” noting that it “is an inspired decision!” Soon-Shiong is a “founder of NantWorks, a network of healthcare, biotech, and artificial intelligence startups” and has a net worth of $7 billion dollars, according to his Forbes profile. Soon-Shiong has drifted into Trump’s orbit, but is it the interest ideological or also financial gain? His wealth has dropped since 2015 to $12.2 billion.

Nantworks signature product is the “first human nanoparticle chemotherapeutic agent Abraxane,” which just a month ago was approved in generic form by Swiss firm Sandoz. The drug is used to treat metastatic breast cancer with a market reach potential of at least 168,000 customers or more, primarily women. The injectable drug was “developed in partnership with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals.” Nantworks was founded in 2010, Jiangsu Hengrui was a formerly state-owned company, and is led by Sun Piaoyang with an estimated Forbes net worth of $10 billion. Is Patrick Soon-Shiong simply looking for protection in the marketplace? In his X post, the social media platform, known formerly as Twitter, Soon-Shiong added: “Hopefully, the era of dogma, group think and implementing policies based on incorrect assumptions that have driven our high cost, poor outcomes healthcare system for decades, is over.” Therapeutics is a big dollar business, and the approval by the Food & Drug Administration under the Biden administration certainly made its way across Soon-Shiong’s desk in the recent months.

Conspiracy, or just cutthroat business? Donald Trump might not have rigged the election completely, even with an attempt to intimidate voters with bomb threats being launched from Russia, but it would seem he’s most certainly interested in rewarding friends as much as he’s openly stated a desire to punish his enemies. Days before his latest political pronouncement, Soon-Shiong Tweeted out regarding his new drug ANKTIVA: “Excited to be presenting data in London today on the 100th patient enrolled in our clinical trial on BCG unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.” Soon-Shiong added further, “Now onto #Lung cancer and #Colon cancer… and even to prevent cancer in patients with #Lynch syndrome which affects 1 in 300 Americans with an 80% increase risk of developing cancer.” The drug only has a 71% efficacy rate through, billed as “Best-in-Class Anktiva Complete Response,” with approval from the FDA having been granted by the FDA in April 2024. Can Patrick Soon-Shiong cure, much less prevent, cancer with his new therapeutics? Moreover, how much money is on the table now?

The question of whether the Los Angeles Times has been fully transparent isn’t new. In fact, former LA Times Editor Kevin Merida left over disagreement with Soon-Shiong over how news should be covered, including in relation to a dog-bites woman story about fellow billionaire Gary Michelson, also heavily invested in medical technology. Make no mistake, the Los Angeles Times still has many great journalists, covering many things, but would you trust them to cover this medical arms race much less Donald Trump? Widely regarded for many years as a once liberal publication, the Times just might be returning to conservative roots, but in a brave new way amidst a 21st century medical arms race over cancer drugs. Years ago, I stood in the new building at USC’s University Park Campus sponsored with a naming gift by Michelson, the terms of which I can’t reveal. However, the presentation was clear: the future of vaccines isn’t just in COVID-19, which we hadn’t anticipated, but in cancer vaccines. Patrick Soon-Shiong has sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into the Los Angeles Times, barely breaking even, but when was the last time his reporters braved into this new world, where undoubtedly there’s a clear public interest in transparency and accountability? The last Times report on Soon-Shiong’s medical enterprises was in September 2021, when they reported he was opening a multi-purpose vaccine plant in his native South Africa after receiving incentives and a “reduction of red tape.”

The line between efficiency and propaganda has never been so narrow. Often, it’s been said that government should operate more like a business, even codified in law, and yet as we head into a brave new fascistic experiment, the question has to be asked: might this actually work? Donald Trump famously reportedly said in private conversation, a claim soon denied, that about the notion that "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had." If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that Hitler’s kind of generals were a cozy, but in the end disorderly group, some of whom even tried to have him assassinated in the failed Operation Valkeryie. Some even speculated that Trump’s own assassination attempt last summer was staged, the product of a conspiracy. Yet are all such notions equal, or are there really some conspiracy theories that prove to be true? The optics between fact and fiction, reality and distortion have become increasingly important as we careen through a 21st century with an increasing degree of denialism, whether about COVID-19 or climate change. The apparent embrasure of this by a wealthy, well-media’d billionaire entrepreneur would simply be the final touch in the hierarchy of ruling needs.

In his belatedly published A Critique of The German Ideology (1846), the much-debated Karl Marx characterized the ultimate denier of reality in the following term as someone that “plays among words the same role as the Redeeming God-Man plays among people in Christian fantasy.” Marx further noted that “His philosophizing mental vacuity was already in itself the end of philosophy just as his unspeakable language was the end of all language.” Sound familiar? Trump's vulgarity is a classic move, one that others, such as Georg Hegel would have certainly recognized as an outright power play. By being vulgar as well as strategic, Donald Trump succeeds in throwing the political establishment off-guard even as he captivates its economy. In response to his election, Wall Street surged along with cryptocurrencies even as foreign markets trembled at the news of his election.

Simply put, Donald Trump is good for business, and not just because, as one woman told me at Los Angeles City Hall, “Americans don’t want to pay $10 for milk and butter,” but rather because it’s believed he’ll deliver a freer market for capitalism to bosom. The 78-year-old wunderkind is a spectacle of his own, promising peace but also military flex and closer relations with rivals no matter the human cost. It’s not that Trump is particularly philosophical, but that he’s almost a kind of monarchist, promising a reign of entertainment as well as favoritism. Hegel’s monarch was rational and a constitutionalist; Trump is neither, but he understands power in a way that surely Hegel would have appreciated even if undignified.

How else can you explain the abandonment of more moderate figures like John McCain, much less George W. Bush, by an unmoderated Republican Party? Donald Trump might not quite be to the liking of an erudite George Patton, much less an Erwin Rommel, but all-mighty, gosh-darnit, he knows how to get his way in a Hun-like fashion. Trump, after all, is descended from German’s and as he pouts and screams about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of our country, he’s absolutely self-confident that never before, ever has there been a truer American.

Link: Cyber-Security Experts Warn Election Was Hacked

Link: Duty to Warn Letter - to VP Harris - Re: Election 2024

Link: Elon Musk’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes can proceed, a Pennsylvania judge says

Link: Conspiracy theory spreading on social media about Starlink interfering with election results

Link: ‘BlueAnon’ Conspiracy Theories Explode as Libs Confront Another Trump Term

Link: Elon Musk’s X sues to block California law that aims to combat election deepfakes

Link: Brazil’s first lady swears at Elon Musk at G20 event

Link: Introduction to the Concept of Lawfare

Link: Donald Trump repeats controversial ‘You won’t have to vote any more’ claim

Link: Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump?

Link: Patrick Soon-Shiong Forbes Profile

Link: Nantworks