Cleta3 Bak
estb 11 26
7 22 tag clta
trifecta
no merri
SAVE ACT CLETA REBOOT --> XO
VOTER FRAUD BALLOT HARVEST WH INFlUENCER JOK VIDS BENNY ESSAYLI
GOP STEAL ELECTION
SEE EAGLEAI BS
see bannon MILLER
SEE EMERGENCY POTUS DECLAR // BANNON
SEE ED FUCKING MARTIN VOTING MACHINE BS GEORGIA CHINA
SEE ONLY CITS 5 26
SEE TRUMP COUP 2
LAUNDER TRUMP SAVE AM PAC $ TO CYBERNINJA FRAUDIT BS
meadows sinecure save am pac 1mill$?
GOD TOLD HER TO GO AFTER ILLEGALS
dunno if this is 1 2 or both?-->3
SEE CPI
see PILF
anti- commie gt replac in illegal voters
see voter suppress honest election integrity BS MAIL IN, EARLY VOTING
disbar?
see student suppress
see demonization/ polarization THEY hate me /am
-=-=
-=-=
mma
Election denial activists promote dubious database to catch supposed voter fraud
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 11/02/26
A group of election denial activists — Peter Ticktin, Jerome Corsi, Wayne Allyn Root, and John W. “Rick” Richards Jr. — have been using right-wing podcast appearances ahead of the upcoming midterms to promote ELLY, a tool Richards created that they claim helps expose voter fraud. They have also claimed to have passed on supposed data from ELLY to the Trump administration, even as experts have criticized the tool for potential “high false positive rates,” privacy concerns, “and unvalidated accuracy claims that threaten eligible voters’ rights.”
What is ELLY?
ELLY, a tool that supposedly analyzes voter rolls, was developed by election denial activists and is reportedly “being marketed to county officials” in Georgia, Missouri, and North Carolina ahead of the midterm elections. According to NBC News, ELLY is used to “aggregate public records like obituaries, U.S. Postal Service data, property tax information or maps from Google to help users cross-reference the data with voter registrations.”
ELLY is being pitched to officials as “an alternative to ERIC,” or the Electronic Registration Information Center, “the nonpartisan data-sharing network that’s considered the gold standard in helping states maintain accurate voter records.” ERIC became a target of misinformation from right-wing media in recent years, and multiple Republican-led states have since left the group.
NBC News noted that “America’s voter rolls are largely built for registration, not removal, and election officials do struggle to keep them up to date.” But the report explained that ELLY “will rely entirely on public records,” using data that “is less reliable than the personal, protected information government entities have and use … to maintain voter rolls, like Social Security and driver’s license numbers.”
David Becker, who helped build the Electronic Registration Information Center and now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, has “said ERIC didn’t use public data because it was clear the rate of false positives would be too high.” He told NBC that “even names and birthday[s] or birth date[s] result in huge numbers of false positives, far more false positives than true positives. And so in order to get quality data, you need to have the sensitive information.”
Who is behind ELLY?
ELLY comes from John W. “Rick” Richards Jr., a retired physician from Georgia, and his son, John W. Richards III. The two created a similar tool called “EagleAI NETwork” that they promoted in 2023 and which was reportedly used in Georgia “to file mass voter challenges in 2024.” Election experts told NBC News at the time that “the kind of public data that Richards plans to use may lead to a high rate of false positives,” adding that EagleAI “draws inaccurate conclusions and then presents them as if they are evidence of wrongdoing” and “might employ search techniques that could be discriminatory.”
“The results are going to vastly over-inflate potentially inaccurate voter registrations,” said Becker.
EagleAI was also promoted by fellow election denial activist Cleta Mitchell, who founded the Election Integrity Network and helped the effort to undermine ERIC. In February, Richards was photographed dining with Mitchell along with Heather Honey and Marci McCarthy, who are two election deniers Trump installed in his administration.
Kris Jurski, whom NBC News has described as “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories and built his own voter roll review program,” claimed that he also “helped build ELLY.” NBC also reported that he “has been promoting it to activist groups and on social media.”
Who is promoting ELLY for the midterms?
Citation
From the October 20, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble
During media appearances in the weeks leading up to the 2026 midterm elections, several election denial activists have promoted ELLY, making claims about what it can find and encouraging audiences to use the tool.
Jerome Corsi, who has a history of spreading conspiracy theories, touted ELLY on the podcasts of David “Nino” Rodriguez and Wayne Allyn Root, saying that he wanted to “mak[e] sure you’re aware of it and others are aware of” the tool. Corsi has claimed that ELLY is “50 different databases coordinated” with all kinds of information regarding voters that will “monitor mail ballots coming and be able to determine which ones are valid and which ones are not valid” and thus “prove that crimes were committed.”
Video
Citation
From the October 16, 2026, edition of DO NOT TALK, streamed on YouTube
Peter Ticktin, an attorney and longtime friend of President Donald Trump, has said that ELLY includes information connecting “voter rolls together with the property appraisers of your county.” He has claimed that with the tool, “we’re going to catch these guys doing the crimes that they’re doing, and then we’re going to be able to make it transparent,” declaring: “This is our opportunity to get our country back.”
Wayne Allyn Root, a radio host with a history of spreading election denial and conspiracy theories, has repeatedly had Corsi, Ticktin, and Richards on his podcast to discuss ELLY. Root also urged his audience to email him to get them in touch with Corsi, Ticktin, and Richards about the database.
During Richards’ repeated appearances alongside Corsi and Ticktin on Root’s podcast, he has claimed that ELLY “democratized the entire U.S. voter roll.” Richards has also said that “we can forward the exact data to the politicians and the lawyers to prove what the outcome should have been.”
Who would even use the dubious ELLY tool?
The tool is apparently being pitched to other election denial activists, state and county election officials, and even the Trump administration. On October 30, election denial activist Peter Bernegger claimed that there are “big problems with mail-in ballots for midterms in Wisconsin,” citing ELLY and an absentee mail-in ballot list from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
During podcasts, Ticktin, Corsi, and Root have clearly expressed that they are trying to get the database to Trump, his administration, or the GOP in hopes that they will use it in the 2026 elections. These three election denial activists all appear to have ties to the Trump administration, repeatedly claiming that they have interacted with the president and his staff. And some of these interactions appear to have led to policy outcomes: Root recently took credit for Trump announcing $1 million for anyone who reports voter fraud that leads to a conviction.
Root has also said that “the facts of the ELLY system” combined with the “synergy” of the $1 million offer could help Trump declare a national emergency “after the election,” something they all have pushed for since last year. Ticktin also seemed to suggest that the supposed data gives Trump “what he needs” for such a declaration.
Video
Citation
From the October 28, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble
Promoting ELLY on Root’s October 26 show, Corsi said that “average Americans can take advantage of” Trump’s offer by using “our database.” During another appearance, Corsi claimed that people could use his and Ticktin’s websites to document supposed tips about election fraud, explaining they’re going to create a “structured mechanism.” According to Corsi, they will use ELLY to check tips, go “through Peter Ticktin’s office [to] file it into the Department of Justice under this $1 million bounty,” and then “we’ll make sure they’re filed with the FBI, and we’ll make sure you get credit for the case that’s filed.“ Root said that he would put their form on his website as well.
Other claims from these election deniers include:
Ticktin claimed that he and Corsi had been “advising the president of the program that Rick Richards has developed,” which Trump was “pretty happy” about.
Corsi claimed that “these databases have been turned over to the Department of Justice and to Homeland Security,” which are “using the tool themselves to do their criminal investigations.”
Root asked Richards and Corsi to give him “bullet points” about the database “because I’d like to send it to President Trump and make sure he knows it exists out there, and I'd like to send it to some Republican candidates I know here in the state of Nevada to make sure they know it exists.”
Root also suggested that he would write a column regarding the database and would “text” and “call” Trump about it, promising to “send it to President Trump’s office — I’ve got good friends there who hand everything to President Trump.”
Corsi has expressed hope that candidates in the upcoming midterms “who lose or those who want to contest an election, perhaps even before it’s certified,” could use the database “to challenge an election result.” Corsi also said that he would “like to share this with candidates” in order to “show you in your race the ballots that ought to be challenged,” so “if candidates get in touch with us, we will get them the data” that could establish “a pretty good basis for saying this election was fraudulently conducted and should not be certified.”
Ticktin urged “every one of the candidates that loses” in the midterms to “contact me or Jerome Corsi or Rick Richards” to “help you get set up with this program,” adding, “If you qualify for turn[ing] people into the DOJ, we’ll give you the information you need to be able to do that.”
Video
Citation
From the October 27, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble
The effort to tout ELLY comes as election denial activists have pushed other measures to try to undermine the midterms. Corsi and Ticktin were reportedly involved with a proposed executive order declaring a “national emergency” over elections that circulated within the Trump administration. Root also proposed his own version of a national emergency, saying he messaged and spoke with Trump about it. He subsequently pushed it to Trump during an interview
//
Key election denial activists in the right-wing media ecosystem
10/01/26 10:00 AM EDT
06/30/26 10:00 AM EDT
07/30/26
-=-=
RWW
10/28/2026
- Hafiz Rashid @ The New Republic: Trump’s Attempt to Punish Cassidy Hutchinson Ends in a Flop
A grand jury failed to indict the former White House aide.
- Jake Lahut @ Intelligencer: The Last Stand of a MAGA Party Girl
Lauren Boebert bucked Trump on Epstein, got ensnared in a sex scandal, and is now fighting for her political life.
- Nina Golgowski @ HuffPost: GOP Candidate, 58, Calls Recent Unsolicited Nude Sexts 'Youthful Indiscretions'
Tennessee state Sen. Brent Taylor said his wife and God have forgiven him, “and I would consider everyone else doing the same.”
- Amy Qin @ The New York Times: One Race in Texas Has Become a Referendum on Bigotry in the G.O.P.
Bo French said the presence of Indian American students at a football game was a “problem.” His campaign for Railroad Commission tests whether these biased views are now mainstream.
- Doug Bock Clark @ ProPublica: How Cleta Mitchell Turned Trump’s “Big Lie” Into a Movement
Conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell has shaped virtually every aspect of the Trump administration’s norm-busting agenda on American elections.
- Travis Gettys @ Raw Story: Election stunt backfires as right-wing activist James O'Keefe charged with unlawful voting
Conservative provocateur James O’Keefe has been criminally charged over a polling place stunt meant to expose supposed weaknesses in Minnesota’s election laws.
- Steven Monacelli @ Texas Observer: Ken Paxton’s ‘October Surprises’ Are Pure Disinformation
For Paxton and the influencers around him, shoddy work in the election’s home stretch is getting rapidly exposed—though some mystery still surrounds a deceptive mail campaign.
PP3
“God Made Me Do This”
Obtained by ProPublica
In January 2024, Mitchell met with a small group of Republican lawyers and election-integrity leaders to discuss how best to prevent fraud in the November presidential election.
Those gathered in the Arizona hotel room were especially worried about noncitizen voting, though numerous audits, studies and analyses — even those by Republican groups and states — show it is vanishingly rare.
Arizona had passed a law compelling residents to provide proof of citizenship when they registered, rather than just swearing they were citizens under penalty of perjury, as is typical in most states.
Mitchell suddenly had an inspiration, she later recounted in a private speech to Virginia’s EIN chapter: She’d lead a push for a similar federal law. “I didn’t think of this,” she told those at the event. “God made me do this.”
When Mitchell returned from Arizona, she was, indeed, a woman on a mission. She convened her closest congressional allies, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. Their staffers met with her to help draft the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.
The bill set a high bar for proving citizenship, demanding that would-be voters produce documents like certified birth certificates and passports that many Americans don’t have. It also required states to use the DHS’ databases to purge noncitizens from their voter rolls.
The ideas in the measure would presage some of the second Trump administration’s most norm-breaking actions. “When we look back to the original SAVE Act in 2024 to the administration’s actions today, the through line is clear,” said Michael McNulty, a director for the watchdog nonprofit Issue One.
Mitchell knew the initial version of the act wouldn’t pass. When it was introduced in May 2024, Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House.
Rather, people in the election-integrity world said, she saw the measure as a strategic opportunity — both to cement her position atop the movement and to reignite the fervor for voting restrictions among the Trump faithful. For years, she’d fought behind the scenes for Trump’s ear on election issues, vying with more moderate Republican election experts as well as fringe activists.
To make sure her rivals had no choice but to support the SAVE Act, she brought on a backer too powerful to ignore: Stephen Miller, senior adviser to Trump in his first term and architect of his immigration policy. (Miller didn’t respond to questions about his relationship to Mitchell or the SAVE Act.)
Mitchell denied Miller had a hand in the measure. “Stephen is someone I greatly admire but we never worked together on the SAVE Act,” she wrote to ProPublica.
Stephen Miller, center, senior adviser to Trump in his first term and architect of his immigration policy, attends the May 2024 news conference for the SAVE Act.
But Roy, the bill’s House sponsor, said in a podcast interview that Miller helped draft it. Mitchell sought to dovetail her election agenda with Miller’s immigration agenda, those who’ve worked with them said. They stood side by side at an event at the Capitol to launch the bill, warning that Democrats were letting people into the country illegally in part to swing elections.
In a coup for Mitchell — anointed the Mother of the SAVE Act — pretty much every significant player in the election-integrity space joined the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, a group she launched to back the bill.
Mitchell directed more than $6 million to groups that bought ads, put out research and took other actions supporting SAVE, tax filings show. Some $800,000 went to the nonprofit arm of the conservative media organization The Federalist, which provided glowing coverage of the legislation.
Sean Davis, The Federalist’s CEO, didn’t answer questions about whether the donation affected coverage. “Cleta Mitchell is a saint,” he said in an email.
The measure sailed through the House in July 2024, then predictably died in the Senate. The bill had drawn fire from voting advocacy groups, which said the measure could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, particularly women, the poor and minorities, all critical Democratic voting blocs.
Mitchell hardly missed a beat. That same month, she led a panel at an American Legislative Exchange Council conference that approved model legislation similar to the SAVE Act for conservative lawmakers to introduce in states across the country. Twelve states have since passed laws that strongly resembled SAVE and 23 have changed their voting procedures to reflect aspects of it.
That November, Trump won back the presidency and Republicans secured majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Mitchell saw the chance not only to pass an even tougher federal version of SAVE — a “SAVE Act on steroids” as she called it in a November organizing call — but to make even more far-reaching changes to American elections.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” she told attendees on the call. “I don’t want us to miss this.”
President Donald Trump in March 2025. When Trump won back the presidency and Republicans secured majorities in both chambers of Congress, Mitchell saw the chance to make even more far-reaching changes to American elections. Win McNamee/Getty Images
“If Plan A Doesn’t Work, I Have a Plan B”
Obtained by ProPublica
Two months after Trump took the oath of office, America got its first glimpse of how he planned to overhaul the nation’s election system.
His March 25, 2025, executive order — titled Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections — looked a lot like the SAVE Act. It required voters to prove their citizenship when they registered, mirroring the types of identification listed in the bill.
It also expanded on the notion of using DHS data to verify voters’ eligibility, saying that all of the federal government’s relevant troves of sensitive information should be made available for this use. Further, it directed the Justice Department to prioritize the prosecution of election crimes and noncitizen voting.
Mitchell was close to a pair of White House lawyers involved in drafting the order and was among a small group of outside attorneys who provided suggestions for it, according to several people who helped write it.
The order was the first in a string of behind-the-scenes victories that have not only allowed Mitchell to shape the Trump administration’s election blueprint, but have given her substantial influence over who’s been chosen to carry it out.
At least 25 administration appointees have close ties to Mitchell, ProPublica’s reporting shows, with several holding key posts directly related to elections.
“She’s had a lot to do with even White House hires in this regard,” Bannon said. (The White House denied Mitchell had swayed its hiring decisions.)
Heather Honey, a senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, has a portfolio that touches on almost everything the administration does on elections. She’s figured centrally in the government’s efforts to find and prosecute noncitizen voters.
Before joining DHS, Honey was a Mitchell protege and led EIN’s Pennsylvania chapter. A high-ranking federal official knowledgeable about the hiring process told ProPublica that the agency hired Honey over more experienced candidates. Her “sole qualification was who she worked with,” the former official said. “She worked with Cleta.”
A DHS spokesperson called this “false,” saying Honey had been recommended by senior government leaders for her election expertise.
Mitchell also has had a hand in shaping the administration’s reinvestigation of fraud allegations involving the 2020 election, beginning with the FBI’s seizure of election records from Fulton County, Georgia.
As ProPublica has reported, the affidavit justifying the raid included material compiled by an EIN-affiliated researcher and cited network participants as witnesses.
When the case bogged down as the prosecutor overseeing it began to doubt its strength, Mitchell was among those who recommended a replacement: Dan Bishop, a former North Carolina congressman whom she’s praised on social media and supported with campaign donations.
At a May meeting, a Georgia EIN leader said Bishop was tapped “thanks in large part to Cleta Mitchell,” an account echoed by an administration official familiar with the matter.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency “has no knowledge of any role Cleta Mitchell played” in Bishop’s appointment.
Mitchell told ProPublica she didn’t believe she’d affected this decision. “I was very worried about the direction of the case earlier this year and made known my displeasure quite strongly,” she said. “The decision to appoint Dan was made by the President and I applaud it, but I cannot claim credit for that brilliant idea.”
Soon after stepping in, Bishop tried to subpoena personal information for thousands of Fulton County poll workers, a move the county and election experts denounced as politically motivated intimidation. A court quashed the subpoena. Bishop has appealed.
As she’d envisioned in her call with EIN members just after the 2024 election, Mitchell has gotten the president to sink enormous political capital into passing even tougher versions of the bill, now known as the SAVE America Act.
The 2026 measure would require voters nationwide to present photo ID to vote and compel states to turn over their voter rolls to DHS, which would scour them for noncitizens. Trump has repeatedly called the measure his top legislative priority, threatening not to sign other bills until it passes.
Lee, the Utah senator who sponsored the bill, said Mitchell was central to the updated version, especially the strict voter ID provisions. Trump, he added, gave it the new name.
Former officials and people in the election-integrity movement told ProPublica that Mitchell has had to overcome naysayers within the administration, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
On an EIN call in early 2025, Mitchell complained that Wiles had responded frostily to plans she offered for the incoming administration, “saying, ‘Thank you, I’ll take a look as soon as I come up for air.’”
At the time, Mitchell said she’d wanted to reply that wouldn’t happen for four years. When ProPublica followed up about the incident, she wrote: “Susie is remarkable and a great chief of staff. She doesn’t have time to read all the things that people like me send her.”
Mitchell has surmounted these obstacles, in part, by continuing to build out her array of alliances.
By the middle of this year, when the White House brought on Solomon — a longtime Mitchell supporter who vetted material for Trump’s prime-time elections address — it was clear she had found another way in. (A White House spokesperson said that Solomon, who also runs a conservative news site, interacted with Mitchell as a journalist would speak to a subject-matter expert.)
A former administration official who said he’d tried to stymie Mitchell acknowledged she’d won out. “The White House listens to her,” he said.
Mitchell had told her EIN disciples not to worry after Wiles’ brush off. She had more cards to play, she assured them.
“I always know if plan A doesn’t work, I have a plan B,” she said. “If plan B doesn’t work, I have a plan C. And so forth.”
Mitchell in January 2026. “Even if she fails, she always finds another point of attack,” said Max Flugrath, a director at the voting advocacy group Fair Fight. “She’s relentless.” Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“Today”
Steve Bannon’s “War Room” Podcast
By the time the first mail-in ballots of the midterms were cast in September, Mitchell had shaped and staffed the Trump administration’s election efforts to an astonishing extent. And yet, the knockout blow had eluded her.
Courts had blocked large parts of Trump’s executive orders. The hunt for noncitizen voters and the reinvestigation of 2020 voting irregularities had produced little of consequence, despite the considerable resources poured into them.
Mitchell’s critics and even her allies, including some in the election-integrity movement, say frustration has prompted her to push for more drastic steps.
During the summer, she mounted an escalating pressure campaign to save the SAVE America Act, mobilizing EIN members to badger recalcitrant senators, according to recordings of EIN meetings. She also worked with the bill’s Senate sponsor and Trump to kill the filibuster, a pathway known as the nuclear option, to get the bill over the line, but was blocked by a handful of moderate Republicans.
Mitchell has taken a similarly all-or-nothing approach in pressing states to pass laws modeled on the SAVE America Act, sometimes with similarly self-defeating results.
Earlier this year, she waded into a battle over an Ohio bill despite being warned that the governor would veto the tougher version she preferred. The final bill contained the provision Mitchell sought. The governor promptly vetoed it.
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, an election-integrity movement leader who’s worked with Mitchell for decades, said Mitchell sometimes runs the risk of making elections less secure by torpedoing practical solutions.
“It was her way or the highway,” he said. “We need to focus on getting concrete wins.”
(Mitchell didn’t respond to Blackwell’s broader criticism but called the more moderate election measure he’s backed in Ohio “not nearly as good as it should be.”)
As the midterms near, she has become increasingly vocal — in media appearances, online and with her network members — in calling for the president to exert unprecedented powers to sway the vote.
“Even if she fails, she always finds another point of attack,” said Max Flugrath, a director at the voting advocacy group Fair Fight. “She’s relentless.”
On the Oct. 6 episode of “War Room,” Mitchell angrily pounded home that several agencies, particularly the Commerce Department, could intervene “today” to shore up purported vulnerabilities in voting machines. She repeated the word “today” seven times during the appearance, like a drumbeat.
Some of those who’ve known Mitchell the longest say her urgency has crescendoed as, at 76, she’s confronted the possibility that this administration is her last chance to realize her goals.
“In her mind, in her timeline, it’s existential,” the former network leader said. “She’s got to do it all, and she’s got to do it now. … The election integrity movement, c’est moi.”
Corrections
Jen Fifield and Reese Dunklin contributed reporting. Misty Harris contributed research.
Contributors
- I’m a ProPublica reporter covering threats to democracy, elections and voting rights.
- Have a Tip for a Story?
- I welcome tips about how politicians, activists, and others are trying to transform American elections for partisan advantage. I am also interested in tips about North Carolina’s legislature, court system, and state government.
===
mma
Election denial movement sets stage for chaos on Election Day and its aftermath
So-called election integrity activists are calling for Trump to declare martial law, mandate hand-counting of ballots, seize voting machines, and refuse to certify elections at a whim
Written by John Knefel & Sophie Lawton
Published 10/20/26 2:17 PM EDT
Updated 10/20/26 4:58 PM EDT
The election denial movement has spent months trying and largely failing to subvert the midterms, and now some of its major figures are articulating their plans to attempt to disrupt the vote on Election Day and sow chaos in the weeks and months that follow.
Their proposals include calling for President Donald Trump to declare martial law, sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the military to polling places, forcing officials to count ballots by hand, demanding the federal government seize voting machines, and working to stop the certification of some elections.
The main figures pushing at least one or more of the above measures include former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, her lawyer Peter Ticktin, and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, among other election denial and right-wing media figures.
These developments follow months of activity from right-wing media operatives who have pushed for the implementation of various anti-voting rights measures, many of which have been thwarted, have stalled, or never came to fruition. A MAGA media effort to convince Trump to declare a national emergency seems to be dead in the water.
Even as many of these pre-Election Day efforts have faltered, new conspiracy theories continue to emerge. Mitchell, who aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has claimed without evidence that left-wing organizations are illegally harvesting ballots from nursing homes, for example.
But as the election draws near, some figures have set their sights on the day itself and what comes after.
Pushing for chaos on Election Day
Noncitizen voting is a vanishingly rare occurrence
Right-wing media figures in the election denial movement are pushing to make Election Day confusing and chaotic on the pretext of preventing noncitizen voting — a vanishingly rare occurrence.
Forcing hand-counts
Tina Peters, a hero to election deniers, and her lawyer Peter Ticktin, a personal friend of Trump’s, have been pressing Trump to attempt to force officials to hand-count ballots, sometimes instead of machines and sometimes in addition to them.
In July, Peters released a “100-Day Risk Mitigation Election Plan” that would require officials to “apply the ‘Bank-Teller Method’: independently hand-count every ballot for federal contests before certification and reconcile that count with the tabulator result.”
Then in August, Peters claimed the administration already had the “authority” to “issue immediate cybersecurity guidance and assistance to transition all counties to hand mark paper ballots,” and that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had the duty to interfere in how states use voting machines.
Peters has also allegedly met with Trump on at least two occasions since her release from prison on election-related charges — once on June 30 and again on October 5.
Ticktin, meanwhile, has taken a slightly different approach recently, acknowledging that eliminating machines at this point is not feasible. On September 29, Ticktin said, “We could still have an order that requires — not hand-counting and get rid of the machines, because there’s no time for that — but let the machines do the count, but before the count — but then let us commandeer and get the ballots. If we have the ballots, we can count them ourselves.” He added that “it would be done after the election, but before certification."
Video
Citation
From the September 29, 2026, edition of Alex Jones Live's The Alex Jones Show
Ed Martin is another proponent of this unnecessary and counterproductive measure. On Bannon’s War Room episode on October 6, Martin claimed that any election officials who want to “switch out your state and stop using the Chinese compromised machines, you can do it, and you can just ask [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne] Mullin for the money and he can help you pay for more people, pay for hand-marked paper ballots and counters and everything else.” He also noted that “Tina Peters met with Trump” recently.
Cleta Mitchell has long been on crusade to limit the use of voting machines, and, like Peters, has demanded that Lutnick interfere in state election processes based on an incorrect interpretation of an obscure federal regulation. Mitchell said that Lutnick should order “mandatory, pre-certification manual confirmation hand counts of ballots in 5% of the precincts and central count for each jurisdiction in the country.”
Stationing ICE and other federal officers or the military at polling places
Calls for ICE or other federal officers at polling places aren’t new — Steve Bannon has been making the demand since at least August 2025 and has continued to do so throughout the midterm election cycle — but they have become more widespread. As recently as August, Bannon said: “I think ICE agents belong at polling places."
Mike Davis, a frequent guest of Bannon’s, said on September 1: “I would have ICE agents and other federal law enforcement at every polling place across America. And that should only scare away noncitizens.”
YouTube streamer Tim Pool said in July that “at the bare minimum, we expect something like we will have federal law enforcement agency at polling locations in states that do not cooperate” with the Department of Homeland Security.
Jerome Corsi, former employee of Alex Jones, took an even more extreme line in calling for Trump to send the military to polling sites under the guise of a national emergency. “Donald Trump can take control of the elections,” Corsi said on September 12. “He can have the military or National Guard go in and make sure the elections are done legitimately.” Corsi claims to have been involved in drafting a proposed “national emergency” order.
Several other right-wing pundits have endorsed the idea of having ICE at polling places over the course of the year as well, including The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, MAGA influencer Benny Johnson, Fox News’ Jesse Watters.
The right-wing media figures plotting to sow doubt and contest results after the midterms
Declaring martial law and involving the military in recounts
Ticktin is the most vocal election denial activist to suggest that Trump invoke martial law after the midterms.
On September 19, Ticktin said during an appearance on Real America’s Voice, “Either we’re going to fix this thing before this election or we’re probably going to see martial law after this election.”
Then during an appearance on The Alex Jones Show on September 29, Ticktin said that if the election is “stolen from us because of their machines,” then Trump will “have to declare martial law.”
“I didn’t say declare martial law for the elections,” he added, “I’m saying in the event that the elections are stolen, what other options are there?”
Video
Citation
From the September 29, 2026, edition of Alex Jones Live's The Alex Jones Show
A few other prominent figures in the election denial movement have also called for Trump to declare martial law. These voices include MAGA “prophet” Julie Green and Douglas Frank, one of Ticktin’s fellow travellers.
On September 15, Green claimed that an impending declaration of martial law would lead to the mass arrests of politicians, judges, and lawyers. “It’s not just an election. There has to be a political reset,” Green said, “During the martial law it will not just be politicians tried for treason. So will judges, AGs, lawyer, prosecutors, who are against this nation."
On August 22, Frank said of Trump, “I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he declares martial law and we have the National Guard come out and we have to redo the election.”
MAGA fantasies about involving the military after the election extend beyond these calls for martial law as well. Where Corsi wanted the military to take over election systems, others in the movement have called on the military to intervene in the counting or recounting of votes.
Seizing machines or ballots
Beyond suggesting the president declare martial law, Ticktin has concocted a plan for the government to seize ballots or election machines in order to “count them ourselves” and prevent supposed fraud. Ticktin predicted on Alex Jones’ show that Trump would “seize the machines” in order to protect himself from prosecution by the Democrats if they win the House and Senate.
QAnon influencer and election denier Juan O. Savin said in an interview streamed on Rumble that any election machines with foreign components could “be seized as evidence and investigated and canceled.” Savin pushed for Trump to delay the election, but argued, “If you need the public to turn their brains on and become engaged, don't pause it then. Let it run the distance and then go seize those machines” after the election is over.
Right-wing media figures have previously supported the seizing of election materials, such as when the FBI raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, and when Sheriff Chad Bianco seized 650,000 ballots in Riverside County, California. Real America's Voice host Wayne Allyn Root said of Bianco’s efforts, “I guarantee you he was going to find that all or most of them are filled with fraud and filled with illegal aliens,” and called the court’s order to return the ballots “a disgrace."
Trump himself has reportedly said that he “regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election,” according to The New York Times.
Pushing for Trump to delay the election
Juan O. Savin is not the only figure who has suggested Trump delay the elections in order to investigate voting machines or other election infrastructure. In an interview with David Nino Rodriguez on Rumble, former Overstock.com CEO turned election conspiracy theorist Patrick Byrne called on Trump to “delay things."
Byrne's plan includes Trump putting former U.S. Agency for International Development employee Tim Meisburger in charge of elections countrywide and making it a one-day affair in which “you have to show an ID” and “there's no technology used.” He further suggested Trump “delays them and then puts this guy in charge of the election. And he could do a national security order, do something like that, and we could have an election like they run it in Burma.”
Video
Citation
From an October 15, 2026, stream by David Nino Rodriguez uploaded to Insights 21 channel on Rumble
Demanding Trump or other officials not certify elections
In an early October interview, Juan O. Savin claimed Trump has indicated “that we're going to fight hard to not allow them to certify the election after the election for reasons that we raise between now and Election Day,” citing voting machines with foreign-made parts as the “reason."
Video
Citation
From an October 6, 2026, stream on YouTube by Michael Jaco
Later in the interview Savin referenced Byrne's conspiracy theories on election machines (Byrne suggested Trump seize the machines following the 2020 election) and asked, “How can you certify a vote that was done with uncertifiable — uncertified machines?” Savin then reiterated, “So what's Trump going to do? He can't certify the election. He lets it go forward, and let's have the food fight after the fact."
What comes next when “the core belief of the MAGA movement is we won the 2020 election.”
The election denial movement has not accomplished many of the key goals it’s set for itself. The SAVE America Act has no apparent path to become law. Trump has yet to issue a national emergency declaration or an executive order to take control of state election systems. The administration’s many efforts to uncover supposedly widespread noncitizen voting haven’t produced any tangible evidence of its existence.
These are real losses, but Trump and his media allies remain dedicated to subverting elections in the United States. As Bannon recently said to CBS News, “The core belief of the MAGA movement is we won the 2020 election." That load-bearing lie continues to animate Trump’s movement, and there is no reason to believe that it will be any different on Election Day or in the days after.
-=-=
-=-=
MMA
Guests on Steve Bannon’s podcast call for Commerce Secretary Lutnick to intervene in state elections
Guests Cleta Mitchell and Ed Martin, two lawyers involved in the election denial movement, argued that voting machines are not secure. Mitchell is already pointing at Georgia, a major hub of election denial in recent years.
Written by John Knefel
Published 10/07/26
Two guests on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast are calling for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to intervene in state election systems on the grounds that voting machines are not secure.
Cleta Mitchell and Ed Martin are both lawyers who have been involved in election denial efforts. Mitchell was on the January 2021 call when President Donald Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes for him to overturn the election. Martin is a former Trump Department of Justice official who claims to have worked on a “path” to get former Colorado county clerk and prominent election denial activist Tina Peters out of state prison.
Mitchell singled out Georgia’s election systems in her commentary, building on conspiracy theories that Trump concocted about vote tampering in that state following his loss in 2020. Trump’s administration has continued to pursue some of those theories, including federal agents seizing thousands of ballots and other voting records from Fulton County in January.
Appearing on Bannon’s October 6 show, Mitchell argued that the U.S. commerce secretary should intervene in state election administration, with Mitchell arguing that a 2019 national emergency declaration issued by Trump gives Lutnick “not only the authority but the duty to act” and calling for him “to order that the software in the Dominion systems in Georgia be replaced and upgraded.”
On October 1, Georgia State Election Board Executive Director James Mills sent letters to the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security asking the administration to make changes to the state’s voting machines just weeks before the upcoming midterm elections. (Mills has generally pursued aims that align with Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution explained that “there’s no indication the state’s voting machines have been tampered with during an election,” and a privacy concern raised in the letters “does not alter election results.” The only Democrat on the election board told the paper that Mills’ letters were “clearly a bad-faith attempt to set up a contest to election results that Republicans do not like.”
Video
Citation
From the October 6, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Well I think that one of the things that's really important is that a lot of people have said, well, the president needs to declare a national emergency for elections. Well, guess what? He already did. He did that in May of 2019. He declared that there was an emergency because foreign-owned -- it's called information and communications technology and services, and that includes election infrastructure -- manufactured in whole or in part or controlled by companies that are foreign adversaries, which includes China. And there's not a voting system in America today, an electronic voting system in America today that is not manufactured in whole or in part in China.
So the president in May of 2019 issued this emergency -- relying on the National Emergencies Act of 1976 issued an executive order ordering the Department of Commerce to promulgate regulations, which they did. The Department of Commerce regulations took effect in February of 2024, and they are the law.
And it gives Howard Lutnick, as secretary, not only the authority but the duty to act. And so here are some of the things that Secretary Lutnick can do today. And that he needs to do today.
He needs to order that the software in the Dominion systems in Georgia be replaced and upgraded, as all the other jurisdictions have done since 2022 when it was determined by Dr. Halderman that Dominion systems have nine vulnerabilities. The software was upgraded. It was to correct all of those vulnerabilities. And guess what? Georgia has yet to install the upgrades to guard against the vulnerabilities.
Secretary Lutnick should oversee that today.
...
The other thing he needs to do is, the Department of Homeland Security sent him, along with a letter that Ed is referring to -- the Department of Homeland Security doesn't have authority to mandate that states get rid of these vulnerable voting systems. But the Department of Homeland Security has created this fund -- they've created grant-funds through FEMA, they've written a mitigation plan.
All Secretary Lutnick has to do is take it and implement it. He has the authority to mandate it.
Martin similarly claimed that “Lutnick has a chance to step up and also be a player” in efforts “for states to change their election systems,” warning of “a red-hot crisis” and “a five-alarm fire” for the upcoming midterms.
Video
Citation
From the October 6, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
ED MARTIN (GUEST): You mentioned the breaking news. There's a letter that came out a month ago and it didn't get much attention until yesterday when I was looking at it closely and I put it up. And it's a legal finding from Secretary Mullin of the DHS, a legal finding -- it's not Ed Martin's opinion, it's not Bannon's opinion, it's not Cleta's opinion, it's not a filing in a court -- it's a DHS finding that machines for election are using foreign parts and they cannot be secured.
And so much so that the letter from Mullin says, I've got a special fund -- it's a billion dollars, I went and found out, one billion with a B, dollars for states to change their election systems to protect themselves. So look, I think this is a red-hot crisis. I mentioned in an interview yesterday that Tina Peters was meeting with President Trump, and that happened. And I haven't talked to her since the meeting, but I know they didn't meet about the Colorado prison system.
We know we've got a five-alarm fire coming in less than four weeks, and all hands on deck.
...
I think Lutnick has a chance to step up and also be a player because of how the law is, but states are going to have to protect themselves too.
Questions about the security of Georgia’s elections have been a concern in the lead-up to the midterms. Local news station WTVM recently covered a town hall convened by former secretary of state chief operating officer Gabe Sterling to give Georgians confidence in the existing systems.
“Voting in this state, in your home county, and across the nation is safe, is run by professionals, they have redundancies, tons of safeguards, and it really is a secure, secure election,” said Sterling, who previously refuted Trump’s election conspiracy theories in 2020.
Georgia Public Radio also covered the subject, quoting an election system expert who agreed that the changes were not necessary and could be detrimental to a free and fair election.
Ben Adita, the executive director of Voting Works, a nonprofit that sells open-source voting systems, testified in front of the board Thursday. During the meeting, he told the committee that Raffensperger has already taken steps to mitigate the privacy flaw, and warned about changes close to the election.
"The proposal to upgrade software with two weeks to go is really fraught and risky," Adita said. "The proposal to alter the vote casting process statewide is fraught whether you have two weeks — or two or six months, frankly — of lead time."
-=-=
DCK 10 26
electionintegritynetwork.org
https://www.electionintegritynetwork.org
Home | Election Integrity Network
Preamble We, the Citizen Voters of the United States do hereby proclaim this Elections Bill of Rights to secure the integrity of America's elections, which are the bedrock of America's constitutional republic; so that our elections are protected from fraud, manipulation, and error, free from foreign interference and influence, enabling the citizens of the United States of America to ...
Joe.My.God
https://www.joemygod.com › 2026 › 10 › mitchell-leftists-are-stealing-votes-in-nursing-homes
Mitchell: Leftists Are Stealing Votes In Nursing Homes
4 days ago"These left-wing groups go into the nursing homes, and they go into the group homes, and they basically steal the votes of these most vulnerable," Cleta Mitchell, the Election Integrity Network's founder, said in a recent appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room show.
Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com › cleta-mitchell-2678085137
Election deniers turn on Trump's team as they run out of ... - Raw Story
2 days agoCleta Mitchell, head of the Election Integrity Network and a Trump ally, who is pushing the Commerce Department to require a partial hand count of the election results because of potential ...
YT
Cleta Mitchell On Election Integrity
Jul 19, 2026American election law lawyer and former politician Cleta Mitchell joins Roger to discuss election integrity amidst a deep national conversation about free an...
Author:Red Apple Podcast Network
globalextremism.org
https://globalextremism.org › post › cleta-mitchells-expanding-influence
The Election Integrity Network and Beyond: Cleta Mitchell's Expanding ...
Apr 3, 2026Cleta Mitchell has transformed from a behind-the-scenes lawyer into a leading force in the effort to reshape U.S. elections. She has built a nationwide network advancing election denial, restrictive policies, and expanded federal influence over voting systems. Following the 2024 United
-=-=
MMA
Right-wing media figures urge immediate purges of voter rolls following Supreme Court’s election database decision
Written by Sophie Lawton
Published 10/01/26
After the Supreme Court ruling on the modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, right-wing media figures and election denial activists are calling on states to purge their voter rolls — even though there is a moratorium on the systematic removal of voters from voter rolls 90-days prior to election day, and evidence the database could boot eligible voters from the voter rolls.
What did the court say about the modified SAVE database?
The Supreme Court recently gave the Trump administration a win on its so-called election integrity efforts, ruling in favor of the government's attempt to weed out exceedingly rare cases of noncitizen voting using the modified SAVE database, which has been newly updated with data from the Social Security Administration. The database was “dramatically revamped” to allow searching through bulk uploads of voter lists for potential noncitizens.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson highlighted in her dissent that the newly shared SSA data that has been linked to the modified SAVE database “contains information about natural-born U.S. citizens as well as naturalized citizens and noncitizens," which she suggested could lead to citizens being pulled into bulk searches and potentially flagged for removal from the voter rolls.
There are already examples of citizens being inaccurately flagged by the modified SAVE database. In one review of registrants flagged by the database in Texas, “some 20% were later found to be citizens who were reinstated.”
The court's ruling also notes that the National Voter Registration Act does not allow states to conduct “any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters” less than 90 days prior to an election, but included the footnote:
We will consider the scope of this provision in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, et al., No. 25–1017, which asks whether the NVRA prohibits States from implementing programs within 90 days of federal elections to cancel the registrations of voters who are not U.S. citizens. The parties in this case do not ask us to address that question and have not briefed it, and we do not need to decide it here.
The Trump administration may use this nonanswer about the 90-day moratorium from the Supreme Court as an opportunity to ignore the moratorium and encourage states to do mass purges of voter rolls using the data from DHS.
All of this is to the delight of figures like Cleta Mitchell and Hans Von Spakovsky who agree: The voter roll purges must go on.
What are election deniers saying about the ruling?
Right-wing media figures with ties to the election denial movement have called for purges based on the Supreme Court’s ruling — despite the clear language barring such purges within 90 days of the election.
War Room host Steve Bannon introduced one of his segments about the ruling by calling it “a flashing green to go purge these voter rolls with 39 days left” and hosted guests who argued the 90-day moratorium is moot.
Former Justice Department official Jeff Clark — who in 2022 praised the election conspiracy theory film 2000 Mules — spoke with Bannon about the ruling on the evening of September 25, arguing that the 90-day moratorium from NVRA is “blown up” because of an Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act — or IIRAIRA — provision that he says is “very clear.” The passage Clark seems to be quoting apparently pertains to the sharing of information about citizenship and immigration status between government entities, not the removal of registered voters from the voter rolls.
Bannon asked Clark if states “can purge these voter rolls and do it right now for the 3 November election” despite the 90-day moratorium, to which Clark replied, “Yes.”
Clark also dismissed cases where individuals have been incorrectly flagged as noncitizens and barred from voting if they don't prove their citizenship fast enough, saying, “Tough.” He argued, “It's reasonable to expect people who want to vote … to come forth and prove that and to prove that on a timely basis.”
Video
Citation
From the September 25, 2026, evening edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
During the same edition Clark appeared on, election denial activist Cleta Mitchell made similar arguments, claiming that the 90-day moratorium was irrelevant because it “only applies to what the statute says is a systematic review and analysis of the voter rolls.” She called for a “very targeted process” of finding individuals who may be noncitizens. Mitchell encouraged people to use “citizen challenge laws” and go to their local election officials to demand “that those names come off before the election.”
Video
Citation
From the September 25, 2026, evening edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
During these interviews, Bannon raised the issue of whether Democrat-run states could be forced by DHS to use the SAVE database to clean their voter rolls. He asked Clark, “Practically, can the White House just tell people, Hey, the decree came out, and you're going to purge those voter rolls because the 90 days is not relevant?” Clark claimed the ruling will “disproportionately have an effect of making it harder to have the Democrats, you know, steal elections using illegals votes in red states than in blue states because, you know, it's not like Adrian Fontes in Arizona is going to be all hepped up about trying to get this information.” Mitchell argued that DHS “can make public the numbers, and they need to fight back when these blue state secretaries of state, these Democrat secretaries of state, who wanna act like there's nothing to see here. There's a lot to see here.”
Hans von Spakovsky — who has worked to “raise unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud throughout the course of his decades-long career as a conservative activist” — also offered up action items on “blue states” that do not purge their voter rolls during a radio interview this week. He claimed that “there's one current remedy which is the U.S. Department of Justice suing California under the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls.”
Von Spakovsky also put forward that passing the SAVE America Act would “force blue states to actually check for citizenship” and agreed with the host that placing ICE agents at polling sites would deter noncitizens from voting.
Newsmax's Carl Higbie monologued about the ruling, calling it a “major win for the midterm elections” and saying he is “interested to see if this cuts away any historical Democrat voting numbers.”
Whether they are willfully ignoring the 90-day moratorium provision, arguing it simply does not count, or conspiring to create work-arounds, these right-wing media figures are more than happy to have the Supreme Court backing up their efforts to create chaos during the November elections.
-=-=
-=-=
MMA 9 26 FAIL?
September 15, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): We have four Supreme Court justices who are supposed to be conservative, three of them appointed by President Trump, and they sided with the communist women on the court and basically said that the lower courts and all their tyranny had to be supported even though Justice Alito wrote an eight page dissent — with which Justice Thomas concurred — saying that this court in and of itself is responsible for the delay and that the states were responsible — the plaintiffs were responsible for the delay.
...
There's so much wrong with this, but honestly I'm pretty tired of these weenies on the U.S. Supreme Court who keep siding with the Marxist girls.
And I'm pretty worried about that for the future of our country.
...
MITCHELL: I don't see that there's anything that can be done on a broad scale before this election, unfortunately.
We've been fighting for this — we've been fighting to stop noncitizen voting since we started this effort in February of 2024 and we're not going to stop fighting.
AN 8 26
Cleta Mitchell: “We had three networks that didn't cover the president's speech. I want to know what their relationship is with China.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 08/28/26
Video
Citation
From the August 27, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's Just the News No Noise
JOHN SOLOMON (HOST): I want to turn to something that is now sort of a repeat theme and just what the White House Transparency Task Force is getting out there. We knew in 2020 that Venezuela hacked the machine. We knew that there were five foreign powers who could hack our machines, that had the capability in 2020. We knew that China took 220 million of our voter files, and we knew that illegal aliens were getting on the voter rolls. And we knew now, in 2020 we knew that these foreign-made parts were there. That's the first time that the intelligence community learned that there were foreign parts, the Chinese parts, in our machines. Six years passed with almost no action until President Trump jumps into the breach this last month. How did we go six years with an intelligence community knowing all these threats and almost no action?
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): You know, John, that is such a good question, because let me add to that. And you referenced it today in the Just the News article. In 2019, Sen. Wyden and Sen. Klobuchar introduced a bill. They had 40 co-sponsors and many of the — most Democrats — and that would have strengthened the oversight of the voting machines, the voting technology. And Sen. Wyden gave a floor speech on the Senate floor in July 2019, where he was castigating his Republican colleagues for not paying attention to the intelligence reports and the threats that had been conveyed to the intelligence committee, to the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the vulnerability of the voting systems.
Now, as soon as Biden gets elected, and when President Trump, who is looking at the 2020 election and saying, gee, there seems to be a lot wrong here, the Democrats completely went silent. Not only that, they wanted to silence anyone who was criticizing the voting technology. Don't forget all the things that they have done, that they did, and continue to try to silence those of us who ask questions.
So my question is, how is it that the Democrats were so concerned about it? Look at the videos of Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. The movie that they made, Kill Chain, about the vulnerabilities of the voting machines. And suddenly after 2020, they forgot all of that. And now they say that we're crazy people because now we see that the intelligence community knew things and they didn't tell anybody. And they particularly kept it from President Trump and then subsequently President Biden. I mean, John, we wouldn't know any of this if you hadn't gone into the administration temporarily as a special government employee to get all of this out in the public. But my question is, it's still going on, this gaslighting, this disregarding.
We had three networks that didn't cover the president's speech. I want to know what their relationship is with China, why they wouldn't want to have covered the president's speech in which he told the truth about China's interference. And I want to know where those Democrats are today who were so concerned in 2019. Now we have the proof of it, and there's nowhere to be heard. And in fact, all they want to do is tell us to be quiet.
//
The plot to subvert the midterms is getting stranger and more dangerous
07/02/26 10:05 AM EDT
08/27/26 2:11 PM EDT
07/31/26
mma
omfg
The plot to subvert the midterms is getting stranger and more dangerous
Right-wing media figures including Steve Bannon, John Solomon, and Cleta Mitchell appear to be weaving together a narrative about interference by China in US elections to justify a national emergency to curtail voting rights
Written by John Knefel
Published 07/02/26
Over the last several weeks, the outlines of a plot have begun to emerge that could signal how President Donald Trump, along with MAGA media figures and activists, could attempt to severely curtail voting rights under the pretext of declaring a national emergency posed by China.
The details of the scheme remain publicly vague, and may not yet come to pass, but the short version looks something like this: First, the White House would declassify and release documents purporting to show foreign interference in U.S. elections, especially by the Chinese Communist Party.
Next, Trump would use that supposed “proof” of a stolen election to declare a national emergency, thereby — according to those pushing this idea — giving him extraordinary powers over the upcoming midterms. That move would serve as a way to advance the anti-voting rights measures in the SAVE America Act, like forcing voters to prove their citizenship, without having to actually pass the law — which Congress, so far at least, appears reluctant to do.
The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is a central node, attempting to advance the operation on his War Room podcast, aired on right-wing network Real America’s Voice, long a major source of misinformation about the 2020 election.
The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House
Bannon’s RAV colleague John Solomon, whose role in the plot appears to be running the declassification effort, was recently appointed to a White House “task force” into supposed election integrity. Solomon was Media Matters’ Misinformer of the Year in 2019 for his role in laundering misinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine through his opinion columns.
Also in the mix is Peter Schweizer, who founded the Government Accountability Institute with Bannon and has moved from spreading misinformation about the Clintons to claiming that China is taking over the United States by exploiting birthright citizenship.
Then there’s Cleta Mitchell, a right-wing lawyer who was on the January 2021 call when Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to tip the state his way. She referenced Schweizer in a June 20 appearance on War Room, positively paraphrasing an argument he made on his podcast acknowledging that much of the voting activity he wants to suppress is actually legal.
“Peter Schweizer put it pretty well last week in a podcast that he does with Eric Eggers, and the question they posed is: If fraud is made — if election fraud is made legal, is it still fraud?” Mitchell asked. “Because what's happened in California over the last decade is that the far-left Democrat, socialist, Marxists, communists have completely upended every vestige of election integrity.” (Bannon had teed her up by referencing the Los Angeles mayoral primary, claiming without evidence: “They stole it right in front of our face and laughed at us the entire time.")
Video
Citation
From the June 20, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Mitchell is supported by a loose array of election deniers who have called on Trump to issue an executive order to seize “king-like powers” over voting systems, supported by the national emergency decree.
Bill Pulte, the newly installed acting DNI, and his recently appointed chief of staff, former Republican National Committee official Christina Norton, also appear to figure heavily into the plan. On June 20, Bannon said Pulte’s role at DNI is “to get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election.” Ten days later, Bannon described Norton as “one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC” and said Pulte is “signaling where he's going on this” with her hiring, adding that “my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election."
The same day, NBC News reported that Solomon’s task force “is gathering thousands of pages of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify some of them, so President Donald Trump can amplify new accusations about past elections.” In describing his unpaid role at the White House, Solomon said he will be releasing “some documents, some secrets you should know about when it comes to weaponization, election integrity, other things."
Solomon’s recent media footprint offers clues about what he is likely looking to find, declassify, and present — possibly out of context. The subhead of a May 6 article of Solomon’s states: “The evidence continues to stack up that the U.S. intel community sought to downplay China's actions in 2020 as Trump sought reelection.” Then, during a May 19 interview, he said: “We do know the FBI had grave suspicions that China was trying to rig the election, probably with help from people on the ground, to help Joe Biden specifically."
The Supreme Court’s narrow June 30 decision to protect birthright citizenship could turbocharge the Bannon-Solomon-Pulte scheme, in part by providing fodder for anti-Chinese sentiment on the right. On Solomon’s website, Just The News, an article about the birthright citizenship case referenced Schweizer’s book and hyped the supposed China menace.
Birthright citizenship abuse via birth tourism, when foreign nationals travel to the United States on temporary visas specifically to give birth, is an issue that Trump addressed early in his second term.
Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer detailed this practice extensively in his 2026 book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” in which he described how China has industrialized the practice on a large scale through an organized industry.
Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute told FactCheck.org that “birth tourism is a very small occurrence – of the 3.6 million U.S. births annually, a tiny fraction is due to foreign women who are not regularly domiciled in the U.S. coming here for the purpose of giving birth to secure U.S. citizenship for their child.”
And as the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind noted: “Consulates have a ton of discretion under existing law to deny someone a visa. And suspicion of birth tourism _has_ served as a reason to deny visas in the past. If the problem is insufficient enforcement, good news, you can solve that problem without changing the law or Constitution!”
Bannon stated plainly on June 29 that Solomon’s “task force” and “also Pulte” would be central to creating a “predicate” for the declaration of a national emergency and subsequent executive order achieving the anti-voting rights goals of the SAVE America Act.
On June 30, Bannon interviewed another of his RAV colleagues, Wayne Allyn Root, who further elaborated what a national emergency declaration could look like.
“Stop talking about the SAVE Act and do a national security emergency for elections, which is the SAVE Act, which contains everything that's in the SAVE Act, Steve, and more and more,” Root said.
Just days earlier, on June 24, Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill to pressure Congress to pass the stalled out SAVE America Act, which he referred to as a “National Emergency."
The “predicate” Bannon is hoping to manufacture could also be for other election initiatives the administration is working on — such as trying to force courts to give the administration access to various state voter rolls — an issue the administration is facing significant resistance to.
Whether this harebrained plot congeals into an active conspiracy to subvert the midterms remains to be seen, but given that Trump has already tried to overturn one election it would be a mistake not to take these rumblings seriously. There may indeed be an emergency — it’s just not the one that Bannon and company are talking about.
mma 7 26
Real America's Voice host Wayne Allyn Root lays out a plan for an emergency executive order on elections
06/30/26
Cleta Mitchell reacts to the Supreme Court late-arriving mail-in ballots ruling by saying it's time to challenge early voting
Mitchell to Steve Bannon: “There's a lot in that opinion that would suggest that we ought to be challenging early voting. We ought to be challenging unfettered absentee voting.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 06/30/26
Video
Citation
From the June 29, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): You know, I think that - I don't know, but Amy Coney Barrett writes for the majority, and this is what is shocking, is that there are five justices of the Supreme Court who believe and who wrote in this opinion that there is a difference between casting the ballot, that is when the voters make their choice, and when the ballot is received. That makes no sense.
Frankly, according to their opinion, I actually think that this gives us good grounds to challenge early voting and to say that voting is — there's a lot in that opinion that would suggest that we ought to be challenging early voting. We ought to be challenging unfettered absentee voting because they also point out, which Marc Elias conveniently forgets to discuss, that — repeatedly they referred to the fact that the ballots had to be postmarked on or before election day.
Well, California doesn't require a postmark. I think we ought to challenge that. I think that what we have to do on our side is that we have to do what the left has done. And I know that that when Stephen Miller started America First Legal Foundation after — in 2021, the idea was to build a judicial attack mob that's similar to what the left has. And we haven't really done that.
I mean, they — there are — we've done a lot better. But these guys, the left challenges everything. And we are getting these terrible decisions from these awful left-wing trial court judges all over the country. And then this decision — to me, the worst part of this decision is it emboldens these left-wing crazy judges that are inhabiting our courts all over the country. That's the constitutional crisis we face, is all of these judges.
But I will tell you that I think that there is a roadmap in this. Unfortunately, it requires congressional action and we see how terrible Congress, the US Senate is. So I mean it's, we have a crisis because the judges are not letting the president do his job and they're trying to do Congress's job.
bannon mma 7 26
June 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): SAVE America Act — a lot of people are saying, hey, do we have time to implement it? Are we going to have lawsuits? But President Trump is driving forward. We're a huge proponent of that.
We also know that Bill Pulte is at DNI, and that John Solomon of Real America's Voice is leading a task force on declassification. And yesterday, Pulte hired, from the RNC, as his chief of staff, one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC to be his chief of staff. So he's telling you where he's — signaling where he's going on this.
My understanding — I don't have any access to this classified information — but my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election.-
mma
Election deniers reach a fever pitch calling for a “national emergency” declaration so Trump can give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms
Tina Peters: “I believe Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say ... that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections”
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 06/30/26
After President Donald Trump issued an executive order at the end of March aimed at stopping supposed fraud with mail-in ballots, election deniers have urged Trump to declare a national emergency to allow a federal takeover of election processes. On June 24, Trump echoed those calls and suggested that passing a bill to supposedly combat election fraud is a “national emergency.”
Media figures who have pushed claims of widespread election fraud — some of whom say they have been involved with drafting such an order that is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk” — have urged Trump to give himself “king-like powers” by implementing the proposal, as it would supposedly empower Trump to “be able to make the rules” and use the National Guard to oversee midterm elections. Others claim that they have asked Trump directly to invoke the proposed order, saying it would be “very easy” for the president to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”
Election deniers drafted executive order declaring a national emergency to implement election policies and Trump issued an executive order on mail-in ballots
Since at least April 2025, a group of right-wing figures and Trump allies have called for Trump to issue a national emergency declaration “to make sure that the elections in 2026 are secure,” even proposing and circulating among Trump administration officials a draft executive order that would “declare a national emergency” and “empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Those involved include attorney Peter Ticktin, former Infowars staffer Jerome Corsi, and QAnon influencer Wayne Willot, known online as Juan O. Savin.
During his second term, Trump has issued two executive orders related to elections. As explained by The New York Times, a March 2025 order instructs the Election Assistance Commission “to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and directs state or local officials to record and verify the information,” and it “seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.” Multiple federal judges have since blocked that executive order.
On March 31, Trump issued an executive order that directs the Department of Homeland Security to “compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State,” and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to “transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List.” NPR reported that “election experts said the order was unconstitutional.” After Trump signed the executive order, election deniers hailed it as a “win” that will leave Democrats “toast.” On June 25, a federal judge blocked parts of the order.
While Trump reportedly “shrugged off reports that he could consider declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections,” he has repeatedly advocated for the SAVE America Act, which would put restrictions on voting but has struggled to pass in Congress. On June 24, Trump canceled plans to sign bipartisan housing legislation “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”
Since Trump issued the executive order in March, election deniers have repeatedly urged Trump to also declare a national emergency ahead of the midterms
Savin, who wasinvolvedwith the proposed national emergency executive order,claimedthat Trump “is going to have to declare a national election emergency that gives him essentially king-like powers within the area of elections.”He added that the proposal is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk, the 17-page order which my team put together within the coalition.” He’s also claimed that Trump “wants to sign it and [is] having the legal people review it to make sure that we got everything right,” may try to issue the order in “bite-sized pieces,” and that Trump has “tried to break up” the proposed order and it will “ultimately … get sealed in one summary executive order at some point in time, but they’ve taken a couple of pieces out and done them individually.”
Ticktin, also supposedlyinvolvedwith the proposed order,saida national “election emergency” would allow Trump to “be able to make the rules.” He also said that it would give Trump “additional forces of some sort” like the National Guard to have “camera observation” of ballots and make “sure the counting is done and done correctly.”
Corsi, another figure supposedlyinvolvedwith the proposed order, said that hebelievedTrump is “very strategically laying out his plans” with multiple executive orders related to elections and “saving his powder for that one last executive order, which will come much closer to the election.” He also claimed that the “nightmare” of Trump’s impeachment and removal by a Democratic-controlled Congress “can be avoided by that kind of an executive order” and Trump’s authority under the national emergency could “extend to utilizing the National Guard to intervene in states that didn’t cooperate.” During another appearance in which he discussed the order, Corsi claimed that “politically, Donald Trump cannot afford to let the 2026 midterm election occur under the current rules because he will most certainly lose. And that’s not going to happen.”
Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peterssaidduring a stream following her release from prison that she had spoken with the president and she believes “Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say that they are — that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections.”She also said on a separate podcast that “we need to get rid of the machines” and “mail-in ballots,” and Trump “needs to sign an executive order ... saying it’s unconstitutional that these things are allowed to be done.” Corsi has also claimed that Peters will “play a major role in one of the key factors in Trump ultimately declaring the need for the elections to be supervised by the federal government.”
Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO who has been aprominent fundraiserfor election denial efforts andplayed a rolein trying to overturn the 2020 election,saidTrump should announce a national emergency to “run our election this year ... and teach them how to run them in Iraq.”He later added that he hoped the president would declare an emergency “this summer.” Byrne is supposedly involved with the proposed order.
Savin’s supposed “chief of staff,”Matt Meck,saidthe proposed national emergency order is “what we think needs to be done.”Meck — a board member of Fight Voter Fraud Inc., an organization which “has been criticized in the past for repeatedly advancing unfounded claims based on its misinterpretation of voter registration information and other data” — is supposedly involved with the proposed order.
Mark Cook, described byColorado Newslineas one “of the most influential election deniers in Colorado,”said, “How much more of an emergency do we need to establish here? It's right in our faces, and we have to do something immediately.” Cook is also supposedly involved with the proposed order.
Laura Scharr, thefounderof South Carolina Safe Elections,saidthat “it can’t just be an executive order — they’ve blown off the other two executive orders [related to elections] that Trump put out.”She added, “The only way is through a national emergency.” Scharr, who is supposedly involved with the proposed order, concluded that “it must be a national emergency. It has to happen as soon as possible.”
Wayne Allyn Root — a radio host who hasclaimedthat mail-in ballots were used to “rig and steal the 2020 election” and who the Nevada Currentreportedis “known for subscribing to conspiracy theories”— has authoredmultiple columnsfor The Gateway Pundit advocating for the proposed national emergency. On his show, Root claimed to have texted the president about a national emergency and he said that he would urge Trump to “sign Jerome Corsi’s executive order on election integrity, Mr. President, and do it now.”
John Goodman, who ispart ofthe “Florida Election Integrity Committee,”saidonStern American's “election integrity call” that “if you like the SAVE Act, you should love the national security emergency even more because it's like the SAVE Act on steroids,“ and that such a declaration “will be the trick, unobstructed.” He has also claimed that the call for “a national security emergency on elections” based on his ideas has been “very well received by Trump's legal team.” Root has said that “John Goodman, my election expert, has been telling me” that a national emergency is “the way to go,” and he claimed that Goodman “sent me all the reasons … as to what I could pass on to President Trump to push the urgency of a executive order to deal with election fraud and election integrity.” Corsi has also claimed to “have been working with” Goodman.
Linda Szynkowicz, thefounderof Fight Voter Fraud Inc.,claimedon her podcast that the Constitution “gives the president the power in a state of emergency from foreign intervention in the elections,” for which “we have more than enough proof.” She made this claim in response to Goodman’s call for a “national security emergency.”
David Clements, a podcaster“criss-crossed the country to who hasevangelize about purported election fraud,”saidat a local Republican event in Oregon that it would be “very easy” for Trump to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”During a podcast appearance with Corsi, Clements also claimed that he did not see “any scenario where we can run a clean election without the aid of the National Guard.”
Douglas Franksaidin an appearance alongside Ticktin on theTake Your Power Back Showthat “we have people all over the country ready to support the president in case he needs to make some kind of emergency order.” The Los Angeles Times reported that Frank has given speeches across the country as “part of a multi-pronged effort by the election denial movement to make a significant impact on future elections.”
Tamara Favorito — who reportedlyhelps runthe “election integrity” organization VoterGA with her husband, Garland Favorito —saidon a stream that Trump “needs to hurry” to declare a national emergency “because November is not very far away.” After being asked if there was “enough time before the midterms for” Trump to declare “the national security emergency and executive orders that mandate the things that make elections safe,” Favorito responded that “if the election officials in the counties put their mind to it, I believe it can be done, but he [Trump] needs to hurry because November is not very far away.”
Gregory Stenstrom, a Pennsylvaniapoll watcherwhoclaimedwithout evidence that he saw votes for Biden being uploaded to voting machines in 2020,saidonStern American’s “election integrity call” that “Trump is required to take executive action.” Stenstrom said, “In the executive order that is being drafted by Peter Ticktin and Mr. Corsi, they can refer to multiple cases within the courts right now that show that President Trump is required to take executive action because certain secretaries of state and certain county officials in key counties are cheating and not complying with the law.” Stenstrom was also part of a lawsuit that reportedly alleged that there was “negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation related to the 2020 general election,” but which a local district attorney said there was “no merit found to the claims.”
Why this sounds familiar and continues to matter
Trump and his right-wing media allies have been pushing claims of election fraud for years. During Trump's second term, election deniers known for promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been given access to the levers of power — feeding already debunked claims to the Department of Justice, taking roles in the administration, and contributing to federal investigations. Some, like Peters, Byrne, and Martin Rodil, claimed they have spoken directly with Trump and administration officials. (The Guardian reported Rodil became a source “for the Trump camp and ultimately for investigators and … promoted two major allegations about Venezuela.”)
As the 2026 midterms approach, right-wing media and the Trump administration appear to have ramped up their efforts to undermine the midterm elections — invoking repeatedly debunked conspiracy theoriesabout widespread election fraud in the U.S., relying on one-off incidents and hypotheticals that are often exaggerated or misleading, and pushing for Trump policy priorities like the SAVE America Act.
Election deniers have already claimed that primaries for the 2026 midterms have featured election fraud, and Savin himself has claimed that the primary elections have been “laying the groundwork” for Trump to declare a national emergency — language which the president has now repeated.
//
Right-wing figures and Trump allies are calling for Trump to declare a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud
:{10/28/25
Election deniers have reportedly coordinated with the Trump White House on a draft executive order declaring a “national emergency” over elections
:{02/26/26
At election denial summit, media figures endorse ICE at the polls and suggest executing a “prominent traitor” from the deep state “to improve our elections”
06/25/26
WHAT CONNECTION TO FLYNN CONF? CLETA WAS THERE
At Summit, Election Deniers Press for Trump to Take Over Midterms — ProPublica
context? 6 26 mma
At election denial summit, media figures endorse ICE at the polls and suggest executing a “prominent traitor” from the deep state “to improve our elections”
Podcaster David Clements: “The one thing that we need to see is a prominent traitor brought before you ... and after that due process, they get to suffer the legally prescribed penalty, which may or may not include a firing squad”
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 06/25/26
Last week, multiple promoters of election denial conspiracy theories spoke at a summit co-led by a QAnon influencer, calling on attendees to monitor voting precincts and to use “a tribunal” and a “legally prescribed penalty” like “a firing squad” as a possible solution to “improve our elections.” Some speakers touted connections to the Trump administration.
The Fraud-Fighter Summit, which took place between June 15-17 in Las Vegas, aimed to “confront fraud in elections” and featured “powerful presentations and discussions on topics such as tabulator vulnerabilities and advanced methods for detecting manipulation in election processes.” The event seems to have been coordinated by two figures in the election denial movement, Wayne Willott and Matt Meck. Willott, known online as Juan O. Savin, helped organize a coalition of election denial candidates for the 2022 midterm elections and claimed to have been involved with a proposed “national emergency” executive order for President Donald Trump to control elections. Meck is a board member of Fight Voter Fraud — an organization which “has been criticized in the past for repeatedly advancing unfounded claims based on its misinterpretation of voter registration information and other data,” — and also apparently Savin’s “chief of staff.”
Speakers and presenters included Tina Peters, Steve Bannon, Jim Marchant, David Clements, Peter Ticktin, Martin Rodil, and Douglas Frank.
Notable moments from the summit include:
War Roomhost and former Trump official Steve Bannon appeared multiple times during the summit. During his appearances, Bannon told attendees that “we need to be at every precinct,” and said whether “you’re armed or not, that depends upon what your state laws are.” He also said “ICE has to be there and has to be there to back you up.”
Video
Citation
From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 16, 2026, streamed on Rumble
David Clements, a podcaster who Lawfarereportedhas “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud,” suggested at the summit “a tribunal” for “a prominent traitor” in the deep state could “improve our elections” as clerks will “start paying attention to executive orders.” While discussing Trump’s actions ahead of the midterm elections, Clements said, “When people ask me, ‘David, one thing, one thing to improve our elections,’ they’re thinking get rid of this machines, get rid of the e-poll book. And those are fair questions. The one thing that we need to see is a prominent traitor brought before you with due process, of course. And after that due process, they get to suffer the legally prescribed penalty, which may or may not include a firing squad. Then all of a sudden, all of a sudden your clerks are gonna start paying attention to executive orders.” He also suggested that Trump invoking the Defense Production Act for military stockpiles meant that somehow the president had “declared a national emergency” and was urging Washington to “restore elections.”
Video
Citation
From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed on Rumble
Martin Rodil, a Venezuelan expatriate who haspromoted the conspiracy theorythat Venezuela was involved with election fraud in America, claimed that he “recently met with a U.S. government official who has been on top of investigating” the conspiracy theory and told Rodil that he only “found 5% of the problem.” While introducing Rodil, Meck said that Rodil had “been briefing” former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the White House, Trump administration official Kurt Olsen, and the Department of Justice.
Video
Citation
From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed by UnAuthorized
Juan O. Savin spoke on a panel that also included Tina Peters and Peter Ticktin. Ticktin is an attorney for Peters who has also represented Donald Trump, and he was reportedly involved with the draft national emergency executive order related to elections. Peters is a former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, who was “convicted in 2024 for her role in a brazen plot to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election” before Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence. During the talk, Savin said the executive order proposal was a “coalition effort” that Ticktin “helped push … with the president,” and Ticktin appeared to agree with Savin that there needed to be a “pause” on the midterm elections to stop supposed election fraud.
Video
Citation
From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed on the “Bannons War Room” Rumble channel
Petersappeared on stage withSavin, who hasclaimed to have advised herover the years, and said election fraud can “happen in every country around the world. And, of course, they’re trying to do it to our country.”
Video
Citation
From a video of the Fraud-Fighter Summit uploaded to Telegram on June 16, 2026
Jim Marchant — the currentRepublican nomineefor Nevada secretary of state who alsopartnered with Savinin 2022 to put together a coalition of election denial candidates — suggested that if elected, “I will get rid of the machines. We’re going to get rid of mail-in ballots.”He continued, “We’re going to vote on a precinct level basis, and we’re going to count the vote on a precinct level basis, and we’re finally going to have a fair election here in Nevada.” Savin, who was on stage with Marchant, urged attendees to support Marchant’s campaign.
Video
Citation
From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 16, 2026, streamed on Rumble
In addition to U.S. elections, the summit also featured substantial discussion of Brazil and South Korea, both of whichhave been a focusfor far-right American pundits in recent years. The first night of the summit was in part dedicated to a movie about former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. One speaker at the conference was Douglas Frank, who visited South Korea as part of a “Korea-US Election Fraud Joint Investigation Team.” Frank claimed the people of South Korea had “lost their country” after “corrupt elections.” During his appearance, Frank also spoke with former South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who claimed via translator that “the days of election fraud will be numbered.”
[vid]
//
Right-wing figures and Trump allies are calling for Trump to declare a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud
:{10/28/25
QAnon influencer says he impacted decisions of secretary of state candidates in Colorado
:{03/11/22
Election denier reportedly involved with Trump administration’s 2020 election probes suggests Maricopa County, Arizona, is the administration’s next target
02/11/26
mma
June 26, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's *War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): Now, Johnson goes up there, and we're advocates of this housing bill. It's an important bill, but it's not a must pass by any measure. They're going to use it as a messaging bill.
...
Help me out here. They're shipping the president the bill today?
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Well, I don't know what day, but what I read last night is that the speaker told the press that they would be sending the housing bill to the president. Once they do that, it is — he has ten days to sign it. And if he doesn't — or veto it. And if he doesn't veto it and does nothing, it becomes a law without his signature.
What my message is, is that he has to veto that bill. He caught everybody by surprise and made the MAGA base — I basically burst into tears when I saw that he had cancelled the bill signing for that housing bill, that was supposed to take place at noon on Wednesday. And he just cancelled it. I had sent some things around and —
BANNON: That was amazing. That was amazing.
MITCHELL: And it was wonderful, wonderful.
BANNON: Wonderful.
MITCHELL: And he needs to stick to it. I'm asking everybody within the sound of my voice to call the White House today — 202-456-1111 — talk to a live operator and say: Mr. President, please veto that bill until the SAVE America Act is put on your desk.
...
BANNON: We're big proponents of some of the elements of this housing bill. It's not perfect, but we're a big believer in that it can have great things, but it's not a game changer.
MITCHELL: No.
BANNON: Whoever's telling the president that's going to motivate the base to go out there is just — they're dead wrong. They don't know the base, and they're not spending time with them.
//
On The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses what MAGA media figures are promising Bill Pulte will do as acting DNI
06/25/26 8:03 PM EDT
Media Matters weekly newsletter, June 26
06/26/26 11:01 AM EDT
Benny Johnson: “These are the Kamala Harris states and every single one of them was a rigged election”
06/25/26
MMA 6 26
Right-wing media’s response to results of LA mayoral primary race is a preview of their midterm playbook
Right-wing media have been using footage from an emerging group of right-wing influencers to allege fraud during CA primary elections
Written by Kayla Gogarty
Research contributions from Hanne MacDonald, Isabella Sherk, Gideon Taaffe & Jack Winstanley
Published 06/18/26
Following Nithya Raman's late surge over Spencer Pratt in the primary results for Los Angeles mayor, right-wing media and the Trump administration leveraged often misleading videos from an emerging group of right-wing influencers to undermine the results.
This tactic fuels election misinformation narratives among the right-wing media and serves to provide so-called “proof” of their conspiracy theories to dispute election results, even though their “proof” is often exaggerated or misleading and voter fraud is extremely rare.
An emerging group of right-wing influencers are mirroring James O'Keefe's tactics
As MAGA-aligned influencers try to make a name for themselves in a crowded field, there is an emerging group of right-wing influencers who describe themselves as “independent journalists” and post on-the-ground, documentary-style videos that spread right-wing narratives on social media. These influencers are using James O’Keefe’s template for undercover sting-style and often misleading videos meant to expose and embarrass liberal organizations and causes.
Among these influencers are Nick Shirley, who gained prominence in recent months following his so-called investigation into fraud in Minneapolis day care centers; Muckraker's Anthony Rubin (who describes himself as a “guerrilla journalist”); and several influencers affiliated with Turning Point USA's Frontlines, including Cam Higby, Savanah Hernandez, and Jonathan Choe. O'Keefe also entered the fold in March, launching Citizen Justice League — a self-described “network of citizen journalists” — and descending into California along with Choe and other Frontlines influencers.
In March, right-wing influencers descended on Skid Row, claiming to uncover voter registration fraud
In March, several right-wing influencers including,
Rubin, Cam Higby,
, Savanah Hernandez descended on Skid Row — a 50-block neighborhood in Los Angeles that is officially called Central City East. These self-described “independent journalists” published content alleging a voter registration fraud scheme on Skid Row that involves canvassers registering people to vote and sign ballot initiatives in exchange for cash, cigarettes, and marijuana. Most of the videos appear to be in collaboration with O'Keefe's Citizen Justice League.
Citation
Screenshots via YouTube and Instagram / Media Matters
O'Keefe and others from O'Keefe Media Group “went undercover on Skid Row, posing as homeless individuals,” and they claimed that they captured “28 Instances Of Cash Changing Hands For Ballot Signatures & Voter Registration Forms” on hidden cameras, including footage of a petitioner, Brenda Brown. In the video, O'Keefe alleged that Brown “hands cash money to the homeless person, not only for signing the California ballot initiative, but also as payment for them to register to vote.”
Video
Citation
From a March 17, 2026, YouTube video from O’Keefe Media Group and Citizen Justice League
On March 24, O'Keefe published a second video, alleging that homeless individuals were being paid “to forge the signatures and addresses of current registered voters on ballot measure petitions.”
Following the publication of the Skid Row videos, right-wing media outlets and personalities — including Sinclair’s The National News Desk and, the New York Post,
, and
— spread the videos and their claims of bribes. O’Keefe, in particular, was interviewed on several programs — including
, The Charlie Kirk Show, The Alex Jones Show, and Steve Bannon's *War Room* — where he made unfounded claims that this alleged fraud has occurred potentially
of times.
After the California primaries, right-wing media leveraged content from right-wing influencers and suggested fraud in Nithya Raman late surge in votes
When the votes started to be counted in the jungle primary race, current mayor Karen Bass quickly qualified for the runoff; for the second spot, Spencer Pratt had an early lead, but as Nithya Raman surged ahead of him in the following days, right-wing media's election denial machine went into action, asserting that the election was rigged without pointing to any specific instances of voting fraud.
As Cam Higby noted during a discussion of the California primaries, “To be clear, we don't know for sure that the crimes that we caught people committing in our investigation are directly linked to the mayoral primary or the gubernatorial primary. We're just pointing out, ‘Hey, seems a little bit weird that they're doing a ballot scam just a couple months before the election.’”
Regardless, right-wing media are still using O'Keefe's and other right-wing influencers’ claims about unhoused people registering to vote at homeless shelters on Skid Row to make vague assertions about the Los Angeles primary. On The Benny Show, California Post's Joel Pollak said, “I think the evidence is starting to point us toward a vote harvesting operation that probably targeted Skid Row and other areas where there were many homeless people who could be registered to vote and could be encouraged either to sign their ballots in favor of Nithya Raman or to give them to people who would collect the ballots for them.”
On his show, The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles questioned Raman's second-place win, claiming, “What that implies is that Democrat activists went around and harvested ballots and perhaps forged ballots or bought ballots to beef up Nithya Raman, who nobody likes, to make sure that Spencer Pratt was not in the runoff.” Minutes later, Knowles praised O'Keefe: “Thankfully, we have James O'Keefe who has come out, done an undercover investigation to actually film these ballot harvesters paying people to register.”
On War Room, Election Integrity Network’s Cleta Mitchell — whom The Guardian called “a rising star of Republican election denialism” in 2024 — similarly invoked O'Keefe during a discussion of the California primaries with Bannon. Mitchell alleged that O'Keefe has recently published videos “showing the political hacks going to the homeless, who are the predominant constituency I suppose in LA now, and offering them drugs and money for ballots. … They knew as of election night how many votes the third-place finisher needed and they just gone out and gotten those votes.”
The Trump administration picked up right-wing influencers’ videos to cast doubt on the California primaries
The Skid Row videos came amid Trump and his right-wing media allies’ push for the passage of the SAVE America Act, which aims to rewrite election laws nationwide and would, if passed, create new barriers for people attempting to register to vote. On March 24, the same day O'Keefe released his second Skid Row video, Trump posted to Truth Social a screenshot of and link to O’Keefe’s social media post promoting the video, adding, “Terrible!”
In his March 17 video, O’Keefe specifically claimed, “The Department of Justice has been sent these tapes of election fraud cash exchange for voter registration happening in broad daylight, and we have informed the Department of Justice there are more tapes coming.”
Two months later, the DOJ announced that petitioner Brenda Brown, who had been featured in O'Keefe's video, was “charged with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote, a federal charge that carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.” Following the charges, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli credited O'Keefe's undercover video for leading to the charges: “I think that was widely reported and it was all over the press and as a result of that, initiated and opened up a criminal investigation with the FBI.” Essayli also said that Brown is “simply the first person that we are announcing charges for in this investigation resulting from some undercover videos that took place at Skid Row.”
O'Keefe and other right-wing influencers have boasted about their role in these investigations, and after the California primaries, Essayli went on a right-wing media tour, claiming to have evidence of election fraud in California that will lead to prosecutions and encouraging people to send in tips to help the DOJ investigate the supposed election rigging.
This California playbook is a preview of what the right-wing media and the Trump administration will do to undermine the midterm elections results
As the 2026 midterms approach, right-wing media and the Trump administration appear to have ramped up their efforts to undermine the midterm elections – often invoking existing and repeatedly debunked conspiracy theoriesabout widespread election fraud in the U.S. and typically relying on one-off incidents and hypotheticals that are often exaggerated or misleading.
Content from right-wing influencers serves to provide the so-called “proof” of election conspiracy theories and fuels election misinformation narratives throughout right-wing media. It also gives the administration an excuse to argue for policies or actions that would restrict voter access.
While the March content focuses on Skid Row, it dovetails with other videos from these creators that misleadingly claim to show widespread voter fraud in other places, as well as previous content with now-debunked accusations about homelessness services in California.
In January, Benny Johnson was on the ground in California, including on Skid Row, claiming that he would help American taxpayers “see first-hand how criminal California fraud is robbing our nation blind.” In February, Nick Shirley published alleging voter fraud in California. According to Shirley, he went “to locations from California’s public voter rolls from the Secretary of State, and not a single location could verify the voter rolls.”
All of this content claiming fraud in California has been fodder for vague claims of widespread election fraud for those unhappy with the results of the California primaries — and it is all a preview of how this playbook can be used to undermine the upcoming midterm elections.
//
Nick Shirley rebooted James O’Keefe’s debunked voter fraud myths for a new audience
02/18/26 4:25 PM EST
The Flaws In The O'Keefe “Voter Fraud” Scheme
01/11/12 4:54 PM EST
The right enters a post-proof era of election denial
06/10/26
===
The Shadowy Right-Wing Group That’s Suppressing the 2024 Vote
Cleta Mitchell sits atop a well-funded effort to purge voter rolls, muddy the election certification process, and promote sketchy voter registration software.
The New Republic 0CT 2024
THE GOP’s policies are hilariously unpopular among Americans. Tax cuts for the rich, gutting labor rights, cuts to social spending, and of course limiting access to abortion are not winning messages. So how is it that right-wingers continue to win elections? Well, making it more difficult for citizens to participate in the democratic process has certainly helped conservative candidates’ odds in competitive races. Beyond the presidency, voter suppression efforts have made a difference in stateslike Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and even Ohio.
For a case study in how conservative political operatives have weaponized voter suppression to their electoral advantage, take the Election Integrity Network, or EIN. EIN is an arm of the State Policy Network and the Conservative Partnership Institute, or CPI, which claims to want to “make it harder to cheat” at the ballot box. In reality, EIN is an organized network of voter suppression activists and conspiracy theorists who seek to surgically, meticulously, and cunningly dismantle the electoral process. Led by former Trump lawyer and vocal election conspiracy theorist Cleta Mitchell, the EIN recruits activists at the state level and trains them to target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters in an effort to tilt the balance of the electorate toward conservative-leaning voters.
If Mitchell isn’t exactly a household name, that’s because her network conducts most of its activities behind the scenes, unlike its CPI contemporaries such as the Center for Renewing America and America First Legal. To accomplish its mission, EIN relies on claims of widespread voter fraud, a phantasmal canard that has been roundly debunked. While there are some federal policies that EIN opposes, such as the popular pro-democracy For the People Act, it focuses its work on the state level, collaborating with friendly state legislators, conducting robust opposition research, and coordinating messaging campaigns to undermine public trust in the integrity of elections.
EIN has chapters across the country that are working tirelessly to alter Americans’ perception of the vote. The group aims to convince the public that elections are not secure (they are), that there is widespread voter fraud (there is not), and that only certain groups of people should vote. What’s most terrifying is that they are finding some success.
The Guardian recently reported that Mitchell and her merry band of election truthers were designing a blueprint to subvert the Georgia voters’ choice this November. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, found that Mitchell’s organization, in concert with other right-wing outfits, has formed a voter suppression Voltron of sorts called the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition. The coalition’s goal is a rehash of the 2020 attempt to discredit the voice of Georgians with the message that any outcome other than a Trump victory in the Peach state should be deemed fraudulent.
CREW uncovered a tranche of emails from the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition detailing its policy proposals and messaging strategy to undermine the results of the presidential election in Georgia. One email included an article from the United Tea Party of Georgia with the headline “Georgia Democratic Party Threatens Georgia Election Officials,” falsely claiming the Georgia Democratic Party sent threatening letters to the county board of elections to certify the results of the election.
According to The Guardian, the emails also backed up previous reporting about two Trump-aligned state election board members who had passed two rules that now allow members to refuse to certify election results. This bogus idea that county board members should exercise a veto of voters’ will was the basis of Trump’s attempted coup. It’s hugely troubling that conservatives have identified this as a viable strategy to disenfranchise voters and undermine their preferences. PITBULLS
Ohio is another state where EIN’s agenda is resonating. The network’s Ohio state chapter played a key role in the effort to purge 20,000 voters from the rolls in Licking County, which had a huge population boom among Black and Asian residents. What’s more, the chapter collaborated with conservative lawmakers on a bill to eliminate voting machines so all ballots are counted by hand. In addition to adding a level of inefficiency, the bill would require a photo ID to register to vote, necessitating more voter roll maintenance.
In North Carolina, EIN met with state legislators who put together a bill that has been referred to as a “jumbo jet of a voter suppression bill.” In Pennsylvania, Cleta Mitchell spoke with a prominent voter suppression group on messaging tactics regarding the election. EIN also appears to have been part of the efforts of Wisconsin legislators to purge voter rolls in the state. All of these states are competitive on the state level and crucial at the national level, meaning Mitchell and EIN’s machinations to suppress voter turnout could have outsize ramifications beyond the affected populations.
One of Mitchell and EIN’s biggest wins has been provoking some states to leave the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. ERIC is the nonprofit member organization created and managed by state-level officials. Its members use a voter roll software that can accurately track and cull eligible voters. Mitchell held a summit in 2022 in which she presented a 29-page report on how ERIC was a threat to election integrity. Some of the secretaries of states from the first five states to pull out of ERIC—Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, and Ohio—were in attendance at that conference. ERIC also plays a role in helping states reach out to people who are not registered to vote. Mitchell pushed for states to move toward using her own organization’s software, Eagle AI.
Pronounced “Eagle Eyes,” this software is one of the most important tools at EIN’s disposal. It is a database tool that performs “maintenance” on voter rolls amassed by a web scraper. Eagle AI has been deployed to cook up the voter roll challenges by EIN and its allies. The database tries to match voter roll records with “accurate” information (such as addresses, obituaries, etc.) scraped from the internet to determine if any rolls are fraudulent.
The problem with this system is that the data is at best inconsistent. Some of the data that Eagle AI pulls is outdated, meaning that many of the voter roll challenges relying on the software as a primary source may be entirely inaccurate. The reality is that EIN’s Eagle AI is more likely to purge voters’ registration based on erroneous data than actually secure the integrity of our elections.
The Election Integrity Network’s actions should be viewed within the context of the larger network of right-wing activists to which it belongs. EIN is a member organization of the Virginia Fair Elections Coalition, a project of the Koch-funded State Policy Network’s Virginia Institute for Public Policy, or VIPP, and run by VIPP’s president, Lynn Taylon. The Virginia Fair Elections Coalition’s members utilize the Virginia Model—effectively a playbook on how to suppress election turnout.
The tactics include, but are not limited to, gathering information about electoral board members, training poll workers, creating platforms to share data related to elections, working with attorneys on election lawsuits, and creating intense messaging campaigns on the state (and national) level, claiming there is no actual voter suppression. On their face, these tactics may be considered a benign attempt to safeguard elections. But the coalition’s mission is far more sinister: subversion of voters’ rights and choices.
In the hands of the right, “election integrity” is a well-funded deception, nothing more than voter suppression repackaged in organization form. The trifecta of Cleta Mitchell, CPI, and EIN are working tirelessly ahead of the election to continue the frankly racisthistory of voter suppression with a new name. Absent real vigilance, these efforts could throw the election to a party whose ideas aren’t popular enough to survive a fair hearing.
Chris Lewis is a senior researcher on the governance team at the Revolving Door Project.
5 26 Billionaires’ Shocking Plan To Silence Working-Class Voters
May 18, 2026
50% of voters say being forced to show a passport would be a barrier to voting, according to a new poll we conducted. Billionaires like Elon Musk, the Uihleins, and Leonard Leo are funding Trump’s attempts to take over elections and nullify your vote.
...
4:59
4 minutes, 59 seconds
According to our poll, 66% of working-class voters said that the $130 fee for a new passport would be difficult for them to afford.
5:08
5 minutes, 8 seconds
And 47% of working class voters say that it would deter or prevent them from voting.
5:15
5 minutes, 15 seconds
It'd be tough on middle-class voters, too: 53% say it would be cost prohibitive, and 36% say they wouldn't be able to vote.
5:22
5 minutes, 22 seconds
And for what?
5:23
5 minutes, 23 seconds
The number of noncitizens voting in American elections is essentially zero, but since 2020, a subset of activists has become obsessed with the idea.
5:32
5 minutes, 32 seconds
All of the groups that had been built up into this election denial infrastructure started almost simultaneously talking about the myth of noncitizen voting.
5:41
5 minutes, 41 seconds
And it was very clearly a coordinated effort, very likely a funder-driven effort, to coordinate around this single line of messaging.
5:50
5 minutes, 50 seconds
[Cassie] Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center took us down the funder rabbit hole– because while the giant, gaping loopholes in campaign
5:57
5 minutes, 57 seconds
finance law make it intentionally difficult for people to follow the money, there are some big names that you really need to know.
6:05
6 minutes, 5 seconds
[Brendan] A lot of the national groups get their money from billionaires like Dick Uihlein or Elon Musk, or wealthy, powerful individuals who control a lot of money, like Leonard Leo.
6:16
6 minutes, 16 seconds
You might recognize Leonard Leo as the guy who picked Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices.
6:21
6 minutes, 21 seconds
[Brendan] Leonard Leo, who controls over $1 billion, has groups like the Honest Elections Project and Save Our States, which have been playing an important role, at least in helping to advance messaging and policy development.
6:34
6 minutes, 34 seconds
This January, the Honest Elections Project released a big game plan that literally outlined each of the steps that Trump has pursued,
6:41
6 minutes, 41 seconds
including serious restrictions on mail-in voting– Tell me about mail-in ballots.
6:45
6 minutes, 45 seconds
–you know, the method that Trump both constantly rails against and uses himself. I used a mail-in ballot, you probably said. Yeah, I did. You know why? Because I'm President of the United States.
6:54
6 minutes, 54 seconds
There are also foundations like the Bradley Foundation, and all of these organizations collectively pour, tens and at this point, hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting these broad national groups.
7:05
7 minutes, 5 seconds
[Cassie] The Bradley Foundation is a Wisconsin-based organization that put more money than anybody into election denialism and voter suppression.
7:13
7 minutes, 13 seconds
They were a big sponsor of the Only Citizens Vote coalition, a who's who of billionair-funded, anti-voter organizations– over 80 in total, a lot of them involved in Project 2025.
7:24
7 minutes, 24 seconds
[Brendan] They help craft legislation, they provide testimony when legislation that would undermine the freedom to vote is moving in state legislatures or sometimes in Congress.
7:35
7 minutes, 35 seconds
They're more of the experts in the room.
7:37
7 minutes, 37 seconds
Back in 2024, Only Citizens Vote created model anti-voter legislation in partnership with the massive corporate lobby group ALEC.
7:45
7 minutes, 45 seconds
Leading the way on that legislation was Cleta Mitchell.
7:48
7 minutes, 48 seconds
She's a Federalist Society member, OG election denier, and most importantly, on the board of the Bradley Foundation.
7:54
7 minutes, 54 seconds
[President Trump] All we have to do, Cleta, is find 11,000 plus votes.
7:57
7 minutes, 57 seconds
Cleta Mitchell now has her own group called the Fair Elections Fund, which helps to coordinate many of these efforts, as well as seed money to state-based groups, some of which are themselves associated with the Election Integrity Network.
8:09
8 minutes, 9 seconds
[Cassie] Ok, here’s another big name: the Election Integrity Network, which brings us down another rabbit hole.
8:15
8 minutes, 15 seconds
The Election Integrity Network is fueled by just a few big players, including the Conservative Partnership Institute and Citizens for Renewing America.
8:24
8 minutes, 24 seconds
The Conservative Partnership Institute is funded by Trump donors.
8:28
8 minutes, 28 seconds
It's run by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and gets its money from big players like the Koch linked Donors Trust Fund,
8:35
8 minutes, 35 seconds
a group funded by the founder of Hobby Lobby, and, of course, the Bradley Impact Fund Foundation.
...
save am pac --> fraudit
datwyler fuckery george santos
fec ltr
499 South Capitol Street, SW #405 Washington, DC 20003 RE: MUR 7646 1820 PAC
Dear Ms. Mitchell: On October 3, 2019, the Federal Election Commission notified your client, 1820 PAC and Thomas Datwyler in his official capacity as treasurer, of a complaint alleging that they may have violated certain sections of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended (the “Act”).
On February 17, 2022, the Commission considered the complaint but there was an insufficient number of votes to find no reason to believe or dismiss the allegations, and the Commission was equally divided on whether to find reason to believe that your client violated the Act and Commission regulations.
Accordingly, the Commission closed its file in the matter. A Statement of Reasons providing a basis for the Commission’s decision will follow. Documents related to the case will be placed on the public record within 30 days. See Disclosure of Certain Documents in Enforcement and Other Matters, 81 Fed. Reg. 50,702 (Aug. 2, 2016). If you have any questions, please contact Ray Wolcott, the attorney assigned to this matter, at (202) 694-1302.
Sincerely, Ana J. Peña-Wallace Acting Assistant General Counsel
am o
...The Conservative Groups Who Funded the Arizona “Audit”Records we previously obtained, reported on by Grid News, show the American Voting Rights Foundation (AVRF) — one of many organizations that channeled money to different efforts associated with the Big Lie — helped fund the Arizona Senate’s partisan “audit.”
On July 28, 2021, Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who had assisted with Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, wrote an email to AVRF treasurer Tom Datwyler, Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and “audit” spokesman Randy Pullen.
“Tom — Randy and Doug are sending invoices to wire $ to some AZ entities from American Voting Rights Foundation,” wrote Mitchell in an email we obtained. “Randy / Doug —… Can you please work with Tom to get the funds out today where the funds need to be sent?”
The next day, Mitchell sent another email indicating that AVRF had transferred $1 million to three groups and/or people associated with the Arizona “audit.”
Learn more about other groups who have funded the Big Lie and how they’re being investigated, here.
Other Stories We’re Following
The January 6 Investigations
Mark Meadows complied with DOJ subpoena in January 6 probe (CNN)
Jan. 6 committee seeks new trove of John Eastman emails (Politico)
Former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller subpoenaed by Justice Department (CNN)
Jan. 6 panel to restart hearings as House returns to work (Wall Street Journal)
Justice Dept. issues 40 subpoenas in a week, expanding its Jan. 6 inquiry (New York Times)
Trump called in to a pro-January 6 rally at the DC jail (Washingtonian)
Jan. 6 panel’s subpoena yields ‘thousands’ of Secret Service records (Axios)
The Justice Dept.’s Jan. 6 investigation is looking at … everything (Washington Post)
“Audits” and other efforts to undermine elections
Fighting bogus claims a growing priority in election offices (Associated Press)
Trump backers flood election offices with requests as 2022 vote nears (Washington Post)
Election deniers advanced to November ballots in 27 states, report finds (NBC News)
Voting machine discussion won’t happen at Arizona Corporation Commission (Arizona Republic)
Election-denying ‘patriot’ groups are trying to stop the use of electronic voting machines across Pa. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Virginia AG announces 20-person ‘election integrity unit’ (Virginia Mercury)
Amid his own fraud investigation, Johnson County sheriff caught telling poll worker to ‘be slippery’ (KCUR)
Lawsuit alleges True the Vote hacked data and targeted small election vendor with racist, defamatory campaign (Votebeat)
New voting restrictions could make it harder for 1 in 5 Americans to vote (*ProPublica*)
LAUNDER TRUMP SAVE AM PAC $ TO CYBERNINJA FRAUDIT BS
meadows sinecure save am pac 1mill$?
note TYPOS AND GUESSES?
i think this is typo
an 1 23 maya GUK
Former President Donald Trump made a “secret” $1 million donation to the election audit conducted in Arizona following his false claims that the election was stolen from him, the Guardian reports.
The audit was requested by Arizona GOP senators, and doubted by many of their colleagues due to the “wild conspiracy theories” it mirrored. An assertion “that bamboo fibers found in ballot sheets proved they had been printed in Asia” even caused some local GOP members to deem the probe a “grift disguised as an audit.”
But nevertheless, the audit persisted.
Although eventually proven baseless and unsuccessful, The Guardian reports that “one of the largest benefactors” behind this attempt to counter the 2020 election results remained a secret for nearly two years.
But watchdog group “Documented” was able to track funding for the failed assessment and eventually landed on Trump’s super PAC, Save America.
First, the group discovered that Cyber Ninjas, the Florida company that conducted the audit, was provided $5.7 million by far-right groups, and then given an additional $1 million from former Trump advisor and attorney Cleta Mitchell.
Still, questions around the origin of the $1 million remained unanswered.
TheNew York Timesreports that in September of 2021, “unnamed ‘officials,’” as well as Arizona GOP senators who requested the election audit, adamantly denied Trump’s contribution.
However, with its research on many corporate, tax and campaign finance filings, as well as emails and text messages between Trump allies that were obtained by nonpartisan accountability group American Oversight, "Documented" managed to counter those claims.
The Guardian broke down the process of how the watchdog group traced the donation back to Trump.
Like many incidents surrounding Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020, tracing back Trump’s contribution to the audit starts with the Jan. 6 committee.
READ MORE:Arizona secretary of state urges criminal probe of Trump's efforts to overturn 2020 election results
The committee’s final report mentioned that Trump super PAC, Save America, donated $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) — led by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows — but did not disclose the origin or the reason for the money.
Further research revealed that Trump’s contribution possibly began around June 2021, as accountability group American Oversighttracked text messages between retired Army officer and “arch election denier” Phil Waldron and Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that conducted the audit.
Waldron texted Logan, “Kurt is going to talk to 45 today, about $.”
According to the Guardian, “Kurt” likely referred toKurt Olden, an “election denying lawyer.” He continued, “Mike L talking to Corey L,” referring to CEO of MyPillow and devoted Trump supporter Mike Lindelland Trump campaign manager Corey Lewondowski.
READ MORE:How Trump's toxic presence in Republican state party politics is being entirely underestimated
A couple of weeks later, Waldron asked Logan if he had received a $1 million payment from Lewondowski. He texted, “Supposedly Kurt talked to Trump and they got 1 mil for you,” but he noted he “couldn’t verify who sent and received.”
According to The Guardian, the Federal Election Commission reported that less than two weeks later, on July 26, 2021, Save America transferred the $1 million to CPI. Two days later, a new group, American Voting Rights Foundation (AVRF) “registered as a corporation in Delaware.”
CPI donated $1 million to AVRF — the group’s first and only donation — in 2021, and although the date of donation is unknown, the clear relationship between the groups, the “timing and amounts” of the transfers, as well as the revealed text messages between Trump allies all leads to one culprit: Trump.
Furthermore, on the day AVRF registered as a corporation, Trump attorney Mitchell emailed Cyber Ninjas CEo Loganand put him in touch with the audit spokesperson, Randy Pullen as well as AVRF treasurer Tom Datwyler.
The Arizona Republic recently confirmed that Trump was notified of the process the whole time
GOP vice-chair of Maricopa County board of supervisors Bill Gates told The Guardian he is “disappointed, but not surprised” by the revelation.
“At the very least, it is highly hypocritical for the Arizona state senate to have allowed the audit to be funded in this fashion,” Gates said.
Ultimately, even after the great lengths Trump and his cohort of election deniers went to assist in the audit, the goal to overturn Arizona's election was never met. The Guardian reports that in 2020, President Joe Biden won Maricopa County, the most populated in Arizona and where the audit took place, by 45,109 votes.
Regarding the morality of the audit, Gates added that Arizona law states, “electoral candidates are not allowed to fund vote recounts which have to be financed with taxpayer dollars.” And although the audit was “technically not a recount,” it’s clear the intent was the same.
AN PP 5 26
When President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held — but just barely.
If faced with the same tests today, those guardrails and the people who held the line would largely be missing, a ProPublica examination found.
At least 75 career officials who once held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety are gone. Two dozen appointees — including many who either actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote or are associates of such people — have been hired to replace them. And once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.
As the midterms approach, current and former government officials and election security experts expressed concerns that Trump appointees who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about balloting are now in positions to control the narrative around the vote’s soundness.
It’s hard to debunk false claims “coming with the seal of the federal government,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager with the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program. “I certainly worry what damage that could do to voters’ confidence.”
Here are some of the key things you should know about the Trump administration’s efforts to, as the president said, “take over” the midterms. Read the full investigation here.
1. In 2020, institutional guardrails helped to prevent Trump from overturning the election.
Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump pushed for federal officials to uncover proof that he had, in fact, beaten Joe Biden at the polls. Election cybersecurity experts with the Department of Homeland Security relayed to Attorney General William Barr that the election fraud claims that they looked into were false. Barr then told the president what he didn’t want to hear: The election had not been hacked.
Barr was one of many federal officials — most of them Trump appointees — who refused to bend to the president’s demands, which only intensified in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Despite the violent uprising at the Capitol on that day, the election results held firm.
2. Less than 18 months into his second term, Trump has dismantled many of those same guardrails.
Since the start of his second term, Trump and his appointees have made significant changes at federal agencies tasked with helping to safeguard elections. In all, at least 75 career officials who’d played important roles in elections work at DHS, the Department of Justice and other agencies have left, been fired or been reassigned, ProPublica found.
In their place are roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of those people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election-denial movement.
3. Among the first agencies Trump gutted after returning to office was one that had repeatedly disproved his stolen-election claims.
Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a “Rumor Control” website to rebut them.
Then, only weeks into Trump’s second term, DHS leadership put employees focused on countering disinformation and helping safeguard elections on leave. They also froze CISA’s other election security work, which included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks. Eventually, all CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred.
A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica that the changes at CISA were in response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous departure from its statutory mission,” which included “electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.”
4. Trump and his appointees have gutted election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies.
FBI Director Kash Patel dismantled the agency’s public corruption team, which had previously been deployed to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. The Foreign Influence Task Force, which aimed to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics, was also disbanded.
(An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversarial nations.”)
The voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. But now, nearly all of the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers have resigned or been moved. Trump then filled the section with conservative lawyers, including at least four who participated in challenging the 2020 vote or have worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump has replaced ousted career specialists with “Team America.”
In the summer of 2025, after the Trump administration had forced out most of the career specialists, a small group of political appointees — which once called itself “Team America,” according to sources familiar with the matter — began convening at DHS headquarters, looking for federal levers it could pull to realize a March 2025 executive order, in which Trump tried to exert greater federal control over aspects of voting.
Among the core members of the group was David Harvilicz, a DHS assistant secretary tasked with overseeing the security of election infrastructure, including voting machines, and three of his top staffers. As ProPublica has reported, Harvilicz co-founded an AI company with an architect of Trump’s claims about election hacking in Michigan.
Heather Honey, who serves under Harvilicz in a newly created position focused on elections, is a source of the false claim that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in the 2020 presidential election — a claim Trump cited on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.
At least 11 administration appointees, including Honey, have ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots organization led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Since moving into government, Honey has maintained close ties to Mitchell’s organization, and she and at least two other federal officials have given its members private briefings.
6. Team America members are using a powerful Homeland Security Investigations tool to try to identify noncitizen voters.
The DOJ has been demanding that states turn over confidential voter roll information, and it has sued around 30 states for this data.
Meanwhile, DHS has urged states to upload their voter rolls to its tool, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.
The goal in both efforts has been to find noncitizens on the voter rolls. But the SAVE tool has come up short, often identifying citizens as noncitizens, as ProPublica has reported, and officials have faced other roadblocks with its use.
More recently, according to two people familiar with the matter, Team America has worked to harness a more powerful tool used by another branch of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, to increase its ability to search for noncitizen voters and bring criminal charges against them.
In response to questions sent to DHS, Harvilicz and Honey, a DHS spokesperson disputed that they were seeking to use the department’s powers to advantage Trump. In response to questions about their ties to the election denial movement, the spokesperson wrote, “To meet the diverse and evolving challenges the Department faces, we hire experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”
7. Trump’s head of election security is behind the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots in Georgia.
Attorney Kurt Olsen once worked to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in court and was later sanctioned by judges for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections. He is now Trump’s director of election security and integrity and is the driving force behind the January raid of the election center in Fulton County, Georgia.
Toward the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. Olsen wanted the FBI to seize ballots from the Democratic stronghold, and he gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to superiors at the DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted. Afterward, Brown was given a choice: retire or be moved to a new office. Brown retired. The raid went forward under his replacement, based on an affidavit that cited information from the report Olsen provided to Brown.
Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.
An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”
8. The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section could have tried to block the administration’s Georgia voting investigation.
In the months following Trump’s return to office, the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which had been responsible for making sure the department’s inquiries weren’t improperly influenced by politics, was eviscerated. Resignations, firings and transfers reduced the 36-person section to two.
Multiple former lawyers for the section said they likely would have tried to block the Fulton County investigation because it lacked strong evidence, had a clear political slant and went against department directives that actions should not be taken “for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
John Keller was principal deputy chief of the section from 2020 to 2025 and was acting chief when he resigned in early 2025. He worries that allegations of irregularities in the upcoming election will be handled on a partisan basis.
“Without that review and without apolitical, objective, honest brokers involved in the process, there is a much greater risk for intentional manipulation or inadvertent interference,” Keller said.
{---}:
MOJO 3 26
These Far-Right Conspiracists Are Pushing Trump to Take Control of Voting
Election deniers are lobbying the president to declare a national emergency.
National Voting Rights CorrespondentBio
On Monday afternoon, as war raged with Iran, President Trump was seemingly preoccupied with more trivial matters. “FREE TINA PETERS!” he wrote on Truth Social, referring to the former Colorado election clerk who’s serving a nine-year sentence for giving election conspiracists access to sensitive voting equipment.
While it might seem odd for Trump to be posting about Peters as bombs fell on Tehran, there’s a connection between her and Trump’s orbit—her lawyer, Peter Ticktin, is a former classmate of Trump’s at the New York Military Academy who has represented the president in litigation against his political opponents. And Ticktin is now pushing Trump to declare a national emergency, based on the false claim that China interfered in the 2020 election, so that the president can assume vast new powers over the voting process. After the US invaded Iran, Trump reposted an article from a far right news site claiming that Iran also attempted to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 elections, seemingly tying the military effort to his voting crusade.
The 17-page executive order Ticktin is lobbying Trump to sign would completely upend how Americans vote and have their ballots counted in an unprecedented attempt to usurp powers that the Constitution gives to states and Congress. The order claims that an emergency declaration would allow Trump to unilaterally outlaw mail-in voting for most Americans and seize voting machines in favor of a hand count of all ballots, which would take much longer and be far more error-prone than a regular machine count.
Attorney Peter Ticktin listens during oral arguments for People vs Tina Peters in the Court of Appeals at the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center in Denver on Jan. 14, 2026.AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post/Pool/AP
That’s not all. The order would require all Americans to re-register to vote in person before the 2026 midterms, effectively voiding all state voter rolls, and force voters to re-verify their status before every election, a wildly impractical measure. It would mandate that all absentee ballots be notarized and restrict mail-in voting to those who have a medical condition or are out-of-town during the election. It would require strict forms of voter ID and proof of citizenship to cast a ballot, which could disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans who lack such documents. “Taken together, the proposal amounts to a radical attempt to reshape the rules of elections ahead of the 2026 midterms,” notes the voting rights group Fair Fight.
“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” Ticktin told the Washington Post. “But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes. That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”
Of course, there is no evidence that China interfered in the 2020 election. And the two statutes that Ticktin claims allow Trump to declare a national emergency—the National Emergencies Act (NEA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—in fact give the president no control over the voting process. (The Supreme Court just ruled that the president could not invoke the IEEPA to justify his tariffs.)
“None of the cited authorities delegates the president any power to change voting laws, let alone the wholesale takeover of federal and local elections that the draft EO attempts to enact, even in the face of national emergency—including attempted foreign interference,” says an analysis from the Center for American Progress.
For these reasons, any such executive order would likely be immediately blocked in the courts, much like the last executive order on elections Trump issued last March.
Trump said last week he’s “never heard about” Ticktin’s proposal, but he’s already vowed to issue a new executive order on elections. And given his obsession with the 2020 election and calls for Republicans to “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” the allure of attempting to gain dictatorial control over the electoral process, no matter how illegal it is, is sure to appeal to the president.
Some of the sketchiest figures in the far right’s election denial movement are behind this push.
Ticktin, whose friendship with Trump dates back to their time at the military academy in the 1960s, has had a rocky career as a lawyer. He’s been suspended twice from the Florida bar. After the 2020 election, he represented Trump in a sprawling racketeering lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton and Democrats of manufacturing allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit and ordered sanctions against Trump’s lawyers, including Ticktin.
“The rule of law is undermined by the toxic combination of political fundraising with legal fees paid by political action committees, reckless and factually untrue statements by lawyers at rallies and in the media, and efforts to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis or any cognizable legal theory,” wrote US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks.
“Taken together, the proposal amounts to a radical attempt to reshape the rules of elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.”
Ticktin subsequently went on to seek pardons for election deniers including Peters, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, members of the Proud Boys, and other January 6 insurrectionists. He told Steve Bannon the 101st Airborne should be sent in to free Peters, who was convicted of giving access of 2020 election records to an associate of My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Ticktin has been promoting the proposed executive order since last April, including on QAnon-affiliated talk shows. “If President Trump can’t call a national election emergency, then we will lose our country,” he told QNewsPatriot in January. Ticktin said the right-wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi has also “been very involved” in the effort. Corsi has been circulating a new draft since the summer alleging that Trump could invoke emergency powers because of alleged foreign intervention in the 2020 election.
Corsi was the driving force behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry’s military record in 2004 and the birtherism conspiracy against Barack Obama, which Trump amplified. Corsi was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller for allegedly acting as a conduit between Trump adviser Roger Stone and WikiLeaks as part of the effort to leak emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Corsi falsely claimed the emails were leaked by murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich.
The work of these fringe characters has been amplified by outside advisers closer to the president. Cleta Mitchell, the former Trump lawyer who helped the president attempt to overturn the 2020 election, said on a podcast in September that she believed “the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.” Bannon has repeatedly promoted the national emergency scenario on his radio show in recent days.
In December 2020, the likes of Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, and Patrick Byrne went to the White House to urge Trump to order the military to seize state voting machines. Trump was talked off the ledge by his advisers, but now says he regrets not doing so.
Whereas the craziest schemes hatched by election deniers were rejected by Trump’s aides in 2020, today those very election deniers hold prominent positions in the administration and are plotting from the inside. Recently, six administration aides took part in a gathering hosted by Flynn where attendees called on Trump to declare a national emergency. “At some point,” Byrne, the ex-CEO of Overstock.com, said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”
an 3 26
As allies of President Donald Trump are rumored to be urging him to issue an executive order seizing control of elections ahead of the midterm elections, Arizona’s top attorney and election administrator both say doing so would be blatantly unconstitutional and unlikely to happen.
“No president has the constitutional authority to ‘take control’ of elections,” Attorney General Kris Mayes told the Arizona Mirror in a statement. “Elections in this country are administered by states. It is a deliberate feature of our constitutional system designed to prevent the federal government from seizing power over how Americans choose their leaders.”
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that a proposed executive order, written and supported by conspiracy theorists, has been passed around the White House with the goal of Trump formally issuing it. It would declare an emergency over alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden, and use that as the basis to wrest control of elections from states and make sweeping changes to how Americans register to vote and cast their ballots, and how those votes are then counted.
Mayes said the entire exercise is based on fanciful claims of election fraud that are not backed by any evidence, many of which were rejected by the courts in 2020.
“Arizona’s 2020 election results were investigated, audited, litigated, and certified, even by members of the president’s own party,” Mayes added. “There is nothing to relitigate, and debunked conspiracy theories are not a legal basis for seizing control of American elections.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement to the Mirror that his main concern is focusing on elections in Arizona, not Trump’s actions.
“I don’t have time to be distracted by noise from Washington DC. IF a new (executive order) is forthcoming, and it purports to violate the Constitution like the last one, we will challenge it in Court,” Fontes said. “For now, local and state elections officials in Arizona will stay focused on the task at hand: continuing to provide high quality elections for our voters, as we’ve done for decades.”
The draft executive order that is being shopped to the Trump administration was published by Democracy Docket, a digital news site about elections, and is said to be written by Peter Ticktin, a Trump ally and Florida-based lawyer who represents former Mesa County clerk and election denier Tina Peters.
When asked about the order by reporters on Friday morning, Trump said he had “never heard of it.”
The proposed executive order, an earlier version of which was published in April 2025 by a group led by Trump ally and election denier Cleta Mitchell, includes a number of proposals that have been on the wishlists of election conspiracy theorists for years.
It would require every voter to re-register in 2026; eliminate the use of ballot tabulation machines and force every ballot to be counted by hand; allow anyone to challenge the eligibility of voters; require all races be counted by midnight on Election Day; and create a national voter registration database.
The proposal also would have each ballot require a unique identifier, and each voter would need a unique PIN, which some have noted would erase the secret ballot requirement by Arizona law.
“First Trump said he’d impose new voting rules ‘whether approved by Congress or not’ and now extremists are pushing him to use emergency powers to control our elections,” U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said on X. “That’s not how things work in our country, and a federal takeover of our elections violates our Constitution and the law. The American people will not stand by and let their voting rights be undermined.”
Trump and his allies have been pushing for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, more commonly known as the SAVE Act, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem making a stop in Arizona to stump for it and fueling more baseless election conspiracy theories along the way.
She called Arizona’s elections an “absolute disaster” and made the false claim that there is widespread voter fraud by illegal immigrants. But when pressed by reporters to provide examples, Noem could not provide even a single one.
The proposed executive order is based around many of those baseless conspiracy theories, alluding to interference by foreign actors in machines and claims of widespread noncitizen voting, both of which have been found to be baseless.
The SAVE Act has passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives but faces a roadblock in the U.S. Senate because the GOP majority doesn’t have enough support to get around the filibuster. Trump has said that if it does not pass, he would look for alternative ways to enact it.
no lnx
Trump won't need to cancel the midterms if this Republican plot succeeds
Thom Hartmann July 08, 2025
James Carville isn’t a man prone to panic, but when he says, “I would not put it at all past [Trump] to try to call martial law or declare that there’s some kind of national emergency,” around next year’s elections, it’s time to sit up straight.
Speaking to NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, Carville warned that as Donald Trump sees a political shellacking coming in the 2026 midterms — particularly in states like New Jersey and Virginia — he may try something extreme to hold onto power.
“The hoof prints are coming,” Carville said, and he’s not wrong.
This isn’t hyperbole. This is history — the history of nations that have lost their democracies like Hungary and Russia — threatening to repeat itself.
Trump has already laid the psychological and structural groundwork to undermine or suspend elections; he just may not need to declare martial law if his fixers pull off what’s happening already this year.
Award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast, a committed non-partisan, has laid it out in painful detail. And what he’s uncovered should terrify every American who believes in democracy.
Palast argues that Trump’s GOP doesn’t have to wait for November 2026 to win. They plan to win it in 2025, through something he calls The Great Purge, authorized by five corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.
That’s right: before you even cast a vote, millions of names may already be scrubbed from voter rolls. If you’re Black, Latino, a student, a woman who changed her name at marriage, a military service member, or simply someone who moved apartments, you’re already a target.
Let’s break it down:
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported over 19 million names purged from voter rolls. While many were valid (deceased or moved), at least 4.47 million were blocked from voting due to bureaucratic tricks like “failure to return confirmation notices,” a tactic voting rights lawyers call “caging.”
In Georgia, Palast’s team working with the ACLU found that 63.3% of voters purged via caging were wrongly removed. Many were African-American.
Georgia’s GOP Secretary of State proudly doubled down in 2023, targeting 875,000 voters, and that’s just one state.
Thirty states now use an error-ridden system called ERIC for voter purging. Not accurate enough? Trump’s legal henchwoman, Cleta Mitchell, is pushing for a new program called EagleAI, the modern version of the GOP’s 1960s “Eagle Eye” voter intimidation operation.
If that wasn’t enough, Republicans have introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would force every newly registered or updated voter to present proof of citizenship in person. And if the name on your birth certificate is different from your passport or driver’s license, you can’t register or vote.
According to Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center, over 21 million Americans don’t have those documents readily available. And 69 million women don’t have their married name on their birth certificate. Many Americans don’t know where their passport or birth certificate is, especially those living in poverty, moving frequently, or serving overseas.
And let’s be clear about the excuse for this law: A racist myth. The Heritage Foundation, pushing the SAVE Act, claims millions of undocumented immigrants vote. But even Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who made it his mission to arrest illegal voters, found exactly zero in court. In fact, his law blocked 36,000 legal Kansas voters and was thrown out for being unconstitutional.
And now they’re bragging that they just purged 5 million new names so far this year, according to Judicial Watch.
Still, these tactics persist. Why? Because they work.
In 2000, George W. Bush won Florida by just 537 votes after tens of thousands of Black voters were falsely labeled as felons and purged by George’s brother, then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Today’s tactics are far more sophisticated and widespread, and with a Trumpified Supreme Court, far harder to stop.
Under Trump, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division — once the bulwark against voter suppression — has become complicit. Don’t expect any help from the feds if your name goes missing from the rolls.
In fact, Georgia’s Secretary of State has already requested access to DHS’s SAVE database — a tool used to track deported immigrants — to cross-reference voters. When Florida tried this in 2012, they removed 172,000 voters but only found one actual non-citizen: an Austrian Republican. But thousands of Hispanic voters were wrongly barred because they had common names like Jose Garcia.
That’s not election security. That’s systemic suppression.
While official channels do their damage, Trump’s allies are also organizing a private MAGA militia of self-appointed “fraud hunters.” In 2024, these vigilantes challenged over one million ballots. In 2026, Palast reports, they’re gearing up to challenge even more, targeting key swing states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.
And if state officials don’t comply with Trump’s purge lists, Mitchell promises her army will go door-to-door, one voter at a time.
Remember, all of this happens before a single vote is cast.
And if that doesn’t work? Now that Congress has funded ICE to become the largest (secret, masked) police agency in America with a network of concentration camps across the country, answerable only to Donald Trump, pretty much anything is possible.
Carville may sound alarmist when he talks about martial law, but let’s remember: Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, summoned a mob to the Capitol, and flirted with using the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against protestors, who he had asked his generals to “shoot in the legs.”
He’s mused to his followers, “You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” That’s not subtle. That’s a warning.
And while right-wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly chuckle and offer “18 muffalettas” in mockery, the groundwork for a democratic backslide is already laid, through legal loopholes, voter suppression, intimidation of Republican legislators like we saw yesterday, misinformation, and judicial capture.
Martial law may not arrive with tanks. It may come in the form of a national emergency declaration, a manufactured riot, or the pretense of mass fraud. Trump doesn’t have to cancel the election; he just has to delegitimize it enough to override it.
So what do we do?
As Palast warns: don’t despair. “They can’t steal all the votes all of the time.” But they sure as hell can steal enough.
We need:
Massive voter education on how to confirm your registration and re-register early.
Lawsuits and court challenges in every state adopting suppression tactics.
Federal action, if not from the Justice Department, then from an organized, relentless citizenry.
Election monitoring from independent and international groups.
And, when Democrats are again in power (G-d willing), a law that explicitly says we have a right to vote. It’s insane that government has to get a court order (thanks, Supreme Court) to take away your gun, but doesn’t even have to notify you when they take away your vote.
If Trump succeeds in today’s massive purge of largely Democratic voters and delegitimizing results, he won’t need martial law. The authoritarian train won’t arrive with a bang; it’ll glide in silently, on rails we failed to see being laid down this year.
So yes, James Carville is right to sound the alarm. And Greg Palast has done the reporting to prove it.
Now it’s up to us to stop it. Pass it along.
NOW READ: The Supreme Court just made it so that you can no longer look away
PP
Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed to a senior position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in which she’ll help oversee the nation’s election infrastructure.
Honey is a protege of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results. In 2024, ProPublica reported that Honey had played a key role in Mitchell’s behind-the-scenes effort to change Georgia’s election rules to allow Republican officials to contest a potential Trump loss in that year’s presidential race. Honey also promoted election conspiracy theories, including one Trump cited in a speech to his followers before they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Though states do the on-the-ground work of running elections, DHS supports them with tasks beyond their capacities, such as protecting IT infrastructure and voter databases from foreign intrusions. The agency, with bipartisan support, took on this role in the aftermath of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Experts on voting and state election officials warned that Honey’s appointment as DHS’ deputy assistant secretary of election integrity could erode trust between state and federal officials, prompting states not to share information with the agency.
“We are witnessing a dangerous trend: the elevation of known bad-faith actors like Heather Honey,” said Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, in a statement, citing Honey’s “well-documented history of spreading election lies that have been debunked in court.”
Fontes called her involvement with DHS “deeply troubling” and said “when the agency gives a platform to individuals who have actively worked to erode public trust, it becomes harder to view DHS as a reliable partner in election security.”
A DHS spokesperson did not answer questions from ProPublica on Honey’s appointment or the exact nature of her responsibilities. Honey didn’t respond to calls or emails. The White House also didn’t respond to a request for comment. Her name is listed on the organization’s leadership structure online, and her appointment was first reported by the website Democracy Docket.
In the first Trump administration, the federal government set up programs designed to shield U.S. elections from foreign interference, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of DHS. But Trump soured on this and other initiatives after the director of CISA publicly rebutted his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Since the start of the second Trump presidency, the administration has gutted those programs, cutting hundreds of employees at CISA. Its director, Chris Krebs, is now under federal investigation, DHS has said; Krebs told CNN that the investigation appeared to be an act of political retribution. The Justice Department has also rolled back a program aimed at combatting foreign influence campaigns. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a memorandum that the Justice Department’s program was disbanded to “free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.”
David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit focused on building trust in American elections, said the cuts had dismantled “nearly all” of DHS’ capacity to protect election infrastructure. He said state elections officials feared that Honey’s appointment, combined with the program cuts, signaled the Trump administration’s intent to eliminate bulwarks of fair U.S. elections.
“The hiring of an election conspiracy theorist with no election knowledge or expertise is the culmination of this reversal,” Becker said. “DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies.”
Two sources familiar with Honey’s hiring at DHS said she began working for the agency last week. An organizational chart dated Aug. 18 on the department’s website identifies her as a leader in the agency’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans. Her position wasn’t on a version of the website archived in July, and officials in former administrations said that there’s been no such job previously.
It’s not clear yet what Honey will oversee, but former DHS officials said that deputy assistant secretaries are typically the agency’s top experts in their subject areas. They’re often involved in drafting executive orders and crafting policies. They also serve as liaisons to the White House and the National Security Council.
Since Honey started, Trump has announced “a movement to get rid of” mail-in ballots and voting machines via executive order, though a top aide subsequently said the administration would pursue those goals through legislative action. DHS has also threatened to cut off about $28 million in grants to help states prepare for terrorism and disasters if they don’t change voting rules to conform to the administration’s priorities, NPR has reported.
Honey’s duties likely would include helping to organize the government’s policy responses if foreign actors make intrusions into the nation’s election systems, former officials said. To do this, and to assess the security of election infrastructure, someone in her position would typically have access to classified information, including the government’s election-related intelligence.
Experts expressed concern about Honey’s portfolio, given her history of spreading misinformation.
“Heather Honey’s past misleading claims about vote counts in Pennsylvania, among other things, have helped fuel false conspiracy theories about stolen elections,” said Larry Norden, an election expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a nonpartisan law and policy group.
Before becoming swept up in the “Stop the Steal” movement, Honey had no experience in the federal government or as an election administrator, working as a Pennsylvania-based private investigator.
Amid Rise of RFK Jr., Officials Waver on Drinking Water Fluoridation — Even in the State Where It Started](https://www.propublica.org/article/fluoride-drinking-water-rfk-jr-michigan-cdc-hhs)
After the 2020 election, she became a contractor for a Republican-backed audit seeking proof of fraud in ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona. According to emails between employees working on the review, which ended up reaffirming Biden’s win, Honey helped draft the final report.
Since then, Honey has led at least three organizations devoted to transforming election systems in ways championed by conservatives, such as tightening eligibility requirements for people to be on voter rolls. Members of Honey’s Pennsylvania Fair Elections, a state chapter of Mitchell’s nationwide Election Integrity Network, have challenged the eligibility of thousands of residents to be on voter rolls.
Honey has also been involved in numerous other efforts to transform elections around the country, including a successful push to get many states with Republican leadership to pull out of a bipartisan interstate partnership to share data to make voting more secure.
Do you have information you can share about Heather Honey or elections work being done in the federal government, especially at the Department of Homeland Security? Contact reporter Doug Bock Clark at doug.clark@propublica.org or on Signal at 678-243-0784. If you’re concerned about confidentiality, check out our advice on the most secure ways to share tips.
JUL 2025
Insurrectionist and voter suppression advocate Cleta Mitchell formed a new dark money group in 2023 to channel funds to organizations that promote the Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election and spread misinformation about the threat of widespread noncitizen voting.
Housed in the offices of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), the Foundation for Accountability Integrity & Research in Elections Fund (FAIR Elections Fund) brought in $3.9 million between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, and disclosed $2.1 million in expenses, more than three-quarters of which was disbursed in grants to other organizations.
The FAIR Elections Fund has no website as of publication. A Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) analysis of the group’s first tax filing, recently made public, offers the first internal look into Mitchell’s group since she disclosed leading it in biographies and news reports.
The group’s IRS filing says that it made no payments for salaries or other compensation, while claiming Mitchell is working 50 hours per week for the group. This raises the question of who is paying Mitchell for her work.
Mitchell has worked to manufacture a crisis around noncitizens voting and partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to push for model bills and amendments to state constitutions banning it — despite the fact that evidence of noncitizen voting is scarce. “Every legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare,” the Brennan Center reported in 2024.
A senior legal fellow at CPI, Mitchell launched her previous project, the Election Integrity Network (EIN), with the help of the right-wing group, which was founded and led by former U.S. senator and congressman Jim DeMint and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows (also an insurrectionist). In 2023, EIN moved out of the CPI constellation of nonprofits and is now “administered and managed by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy with Virginia Institute president Lynn Taylor also serving as EIN’s Chairman as Cleta Mitchell retains an active EIN role as its founder,” according to a 2023 booklet obtained by CMD.
EIN’s latest IRS filing shows that as of December 2023 it was still registered at CPI’s office address, with just $213 left in the bank.
Serving on the FAIR Elections Fund board of directors alongside Mitchell, its president, are Vice President Heather Honey, Vice President Daniel Bean, Secretary Don Workman, and Treasurer Pat Corrigan.
Honey, also an executive director at the Election Research Institute, is a close ally of Mitchell who worked with her to sow doubt about the efficacy and trustworthiness of the nonpartisan Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which has resulted in many states opting out of this interstate effort to help ensure accurate voter rolls.
A 2024 analysis by Votebeat and Spotlight PA found that conclusions in Honey’s report on ERIC “are false, often based on out-of-context examples, and… are frequently not backed by the data she presents.”
The IRS filing shows that the FAIR Elections Fund paid $121,284 to Honey’s organization Verity Vote LLC for “consulting.”
Vice President Daniel Bean is an attorney who represented Trump advisor Andy Surabian when he was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Secretary Don Workman is a partner at Baker & Hostetler and was a partner at Foley & Lardner, the Washington-based law firm that Mitchell was forced to resign from after she participated in the infamous post-2020 election phone call in which Trump urged Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes for him to claim victory in that swing state.
Treasurer Pat Corrigan runs Compass Direct LLC, a fundraising company that works for CPI, where his brother Edward is president. Given Corrigan’s role as treasurer, he is likely the one tasked with raising funds for the organization.
$1.6 Million in Grants
The FAIR Elections Fund distributed $1.6 million in grants in 2023-24 to 10 allied groups.
The FDRLST Media Foundation, which publishes the right-wing web magazine The Federalist, received $400,000, the largest grant. In 2020, The Federalist falsely accused Democrats of trying to steal the election in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania during extended vote counting in the days following the presidential election.
The pro-Trump outlet also published a column EIN’s Kerri Toloczko misinforming readers that noncitizen voting is a crisis that needs to be addressed through federal legislation. Since 2019 it has run nine pieces by Mitchell on noncitizen voting, purging voter rolls, and voting by mail.
EIN’s administrator, the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, received the next largest grant of $325,000. The Institute held its fifth Election Integrity Summit on May 16, and holds “infrastructure trainings” twice a month.
The FAIR Elections Fund funneled its third largest grant of $300,000 to the State Freedom Caucus Foundation, the sister organization of the State Freedom Caucus Network (SFCN). CPI incubated SFCN, which Meadows launched in 2021. From the beginning, the group has touted “election integrity” as a priority.
The network has been deployed to ban noncitizens from voting at the federal level as well as at the state level in places like Missouri.
Mitchell also spoke at the 2024 State Freedom Caucus Network Summit, where Wyoming State Freedom Caucus Chair Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (R) said she “shared some shocking statistics about American elections and illegal immigration.”
The Immigration Accountability Project (IAP) received $150,000 from the FAIR Elections Fund, the IRS filing shows. IAP President Chris Chmielenski collaborated with Mitchell and Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, to work a room of 150 attendees at ALEC’s 2024 Annual Meeting to approve an Only Citizens Vote Coalition model bill banning noncitizen voting, The Guardian reported.
The FAIR Elections Fund, Immigration Accountability Project, and Election Transparency Initiative are all members of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, with Mitchell serving as a “co-convener.”
Also receiving FAIR Elections Fund grants between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 were the Tea Party Patriots Foundation ($100,000); Citizen Outreach Foundation ($89,100); John K MacIver Institute for Public Policy ($75,000); Strong Communities Foundation of AZ ($75,000); Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty ($75,000); and Wisconsin Voter Alliance Corp ($25,000).
In November, Wisconsin voters passed a ballot measure to change one word in the state constitution to prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in any local, state, or federal election. The right-wing MacIver Institute and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty were proponents of its passage.
Funding is Dark
Despite the new IRS filings, funding information about the FAIR Elections Fund is scarce. The organization is not required to disclose its donors, and a CMD search of the filings only identified a single contribution of $795,000 from CPI, which does not note the original source of the funds. A CMD analysis of CPI’s known funders is available here.
About David Armiak
David Armiak is research director and an investigative journalist with the Center for Media and Democracy. David joined CMD in 2015, has conducted extensive investigations on dark money, corporate corruption, and right-wing networks, and is responsible for filing and analyzing hundreds of public records requests every year. David has a strong research interest in social movements and political power, and has delivered many talks on the subject. He has a Bachelor's degree in philosophy and anthropology from Boston University and a Master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
GGL 10 25
Democracy Docket
Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections
Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections ... Cleta Mitchell thinks President Donald Trump may declare a...
.
1 month ago
Democracy Docket
Plaintiffs Want Cleta Mitchell to Testify on Law to Suppress Student Voting
Voting rights groups in North Carolina are asking a federal court to compel election-denying lawyer Cleta Mitchell to testify in their...
.
2 weeks ago
Carolina Journal
Critics ask court to compel election integrity activist Mitchell to testify at NC trial
Left-of-center groups challenging a provision of North Carolina election law are asking a federal judge to help them ensure election...
.
2 weeks ago
MSNBC News
Researcher who distorted voter data gets election integrity job in Trump’s second term
For those who followed Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, Cleta Mitchell's name probably rings a bell.
.
1 month ago
CBS News
Can Trump use emergency powers to influence federal elections?
Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who played a role in President Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election, said Mr. Trump could declare a...
.
1 month ago
NPR
Despite Trump's win, 'election integrity' activists still seek sweeping voting changes
Republican voters say they trust the 2024 election was administered well, yet pro-Trump conservatives are pushing some sweeping reforms to...
.
Jan 13, 2025
ProPublica
She Pushed to Overturn Trump’s Loss in the 2020 Election. Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security.
Heather Honey has been appointed to a senior position in the Department of Homeland Security. State election officials and voting experts...
.
1 month ago
The Guardian
She was a firebrand Democrat. Now, Cleta Mitchell is a rising star of Republican election denialism | Donald Trump
Mitchell is now one of the most influential Republicans working to shape election law and policy ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
.
Jul 2, 2024
EXPOSEDbyCMD
Cleta Mitchell’s New Dark Money Elections Group Raised $3.9 Million in Its First Full Year of Operations
The pro-Trump outlet also published a column EIN's Kerri Toloczko misinforming readers that noncitizen voting is a crisis that needs to be...
3X?
Election denial groups and right-wing media figures are talking about their election interference plans as voting begins
Election denial groups have publicly talked about their plans to challenge voter rolls, monitor ballot drop boxes, and recruit and train poll workers to be a “spy in the camp” on Election Day
Written by Payton Armstrong
Research contributions from Media Matters Staff
Published 10/31/24
Election denial groups and some right-wing media figures have been discussing their plans to interfere in the 2024 voting process, building on previous efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and interfere with the 2022 midterm election.
Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, election denial groups and right-wing media figures have discussed their plans to challenge citizens’ right to vote, vowed to monitor drop boxes, claimed to be recruiting and training poll workers, launched apps to track supposed fraud on Election Day, and encouraged activists to monitor for noncitizen voting.
In the 2022 midterm elections, right-wing media supported election denial groups recruiting poll workers and poll watchers and asking for volunteers to monitor ballot drop boxes. These efforts had seemingly grown out of conspiracy theories from former President Donald Trump and right-wing media that the 2020 election was rife with voter fraud and had been stolen, culminating in a violent attempt to overturn the election by storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
As voting begins for the 2024 election, “election officials across the country are ramping up their security measures at polling places,” as reported by NBC News, including “beefing up law enforcement presence to donning bulletproof vests to deploying drones for surveillance amid an increasingly hostile environment.”
Right-wing groups and media figures are encouraging challenges to voter rolls, including asking supporters to flag “suspicious voter[s]” with “Hispanic-sounding last names”
Election denial group True the Vote has urged followers to submit voter-eligibility complaints by using an app, resulting in thousands of challenges to voter registrations.True the Vote is run by Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips, who regularly promote the group’s activities in right-wing media. CNN reported: “One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories. The group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has called on followers to help clean voter rolls by using an app called IV3 that enables users to research voter data and submit voter-eligibility challenges to local election offices.” CNN, [7/29/24; Media Matters, 1/26/23]
Cleta Mitchell — who leads the Election Integrity Network and has appeared frequently in right-wing media to promote the group and its activities, and fearmonger about noncitizen voting — was reportedly involved in helping the development of EagleAI for mass voter challenges in various states.As reported by Documented, “Eagle AI draws from public data sources like voter files and newspaper obituaries to build a dashboard for activists to conduct their own ‘list maintenance’ and generate potentially thousands of challenges to voter eligibility with a few clicks.” Documented, [8/17/23; Media Matters, 6/14/24, 10/2/24]
Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, a coalition of election-denying activists, has reportedly been recruiting people at the state level to “target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters.”The New Republic reported that the coalition “recruits activists at the state level and trains them to target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters in an effort to tilt the balance of the electorate toward conservative-leaning voters.” The New Republic, [10/16/24]
In the last several months, the Ohio chapter of Election Integrity Network has reportedly “mounted a statewide effort to kick thousands of registered voters off the rolls in the runup to the 2024 election.”According to local reporting, at least 13 counties “have received thousands of voter registration challenges, the vast majority of which have been rejected” and that “most of those challenges, the officials say, come from locals identifying themselves as members of the Election Integrity Network.” Cleveland.com, [9/25/24]
On CBS News, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network encouraged people to flag “Hispanic-sounding last names” for potential voter roll challenges. In an interview with the network, James Womack, head of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, discussed creating a “list of suspicious voters” who may be on the voter rolls in North Carolina. CBS also aired a clip of a video in which Womack also said, “If you’ve got folks that you, that were registered and they’re missing information … and they were registered in the last 90 days before the election, and they've got Hispanic-sounding last names, that probably is, is a suspicious voter.” Media Matters, [10/22/24; CBS News, 10/21/24]
On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, the founder of Fight Voter Fraud, Linda Szynkowicz, offered the MAGA audience voter data for mass eligibility challenges in Georgia. “Go to our website, download the request data so you can have a list of people in your county that we believe should not be voting in your county, and you can actually hang on to those,” she said, adding, “Do your due diligence. We’ll even teach you how to do it.” Media Matters, [10/7/24]
Right-wing groups and media figures have been recruiting and training poll workers and observers
Election Integrity Network claims to have recruited tens of thousands of “election integrity patriots” and holds regular online coordinating calls. The Guardian, [10/21/24]
Right-wing group Judicial Watch announced that “as part of its ongoing election integrity efforts, its trained observers will monitor polling sites in Wisconsin on November 5.”Judicial Watch President and podcast host Tom Fitton was quoted in the press release saying, “Judicial Watch’s teams will monitor the election in Wisconsin to expose and deter any fraud.” Per Democracy Docket, Judicial Watch is “a right-wing legal group that’s constantly filing all manner of litigation against the government — Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, challenges to immigration policy, attempts to thwart environmental actions and any other issue that riles up Republicans. ‘Judicial Watch’s strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits,’ the New York Times wrote of the organization in a 2016 profile.” Judicial Watch, [10/22/24; Democracy Docket, 6/11/24]
* Tea Party Patriots, which sponsored Trump’s January 6 rally, is apparently doing “poll watcher trainings specifically in Georgia” in collaboration with Election Integrity Network.On War Room, election denial figure and Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin claimed her group is also partnering with Turning Point Action and America First Works on door knocking efforts. Martin also described the groups’ efforts in Georgia in a separate interview, saying they are “making sure that poll watchers are recruited and trained.” Media Matters, [9/9/24, 1/30/24]
Right-wing group VoterGA — co-founded by Garland Favorito, who has fundraised for his election denial organization during appearances on a far-right show — collaborated with the Election Integrity Network on poll-watcher training.CNN reported that “VoterGA, a nonprofit led by a computer consultant-turned-activist named Garland Favorito who has a long history of promoting debunked conspiracy theories, has made inroads with some election officials.” In a phone interview with CNN, “Favorito argued that he and his group are fighting for election integrity and that some state and local officials have sought to cover-up elections malfeasance in Georgia. As an example, he cited his inability to review ballots from the 2020 election,” ignoring that state law requires for the ballots to be sealed after the elections. CNN, [10/9/24; Media Matters, 6/14/23]
On the Christian nationalist program FlashPoint, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump recruited poll watchers and promoted the RNC’s new “election integrity division” to “ensure that there is no funny business” in the election.During the appearance, Trump said that the RNC is working to stop “3:00 a.m. dumps” and “ballots in suitcases that miraculously appear places,” and she called on the audience to “volunteer to be part of our team, ballot harvest with us where it's legal, you know, be a poll watcher, be a poll worker.” Media Matters, [5/30/24]
Christian nationalist “prophet” and podcast host Lance Wallnau has been traveling the country on his “Courage Tour” recruiting conservative Christians as poll workers to be a “spy in the camp” on Election Day.During Wallnau’s tour — which recently got a boost from Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) — attendees were directed to a group called Lion of Judah, which ProPublica reported “offers a free course titled ‘Fight the Fraud,’ with modules detailing poll workers’ basic duties and helping people find their local elections offices so they can apply as well as email templates to streamline the process.” Notably, Wallnau has already declared that “there will be cheating” in the 2024 election. ProPublica, [10/16/24; Media Matters, 9/27/24]
A Turning Point Action member used QAnon supporter Melody Jennings’ podcast to recruit poll workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.The member, Brett Galaszewski, urged Jennings’ audience to become poll workers and get involved with the Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Republican Party’s “Election Integrity Committee.” Jennings is an election denier who participated in election denial efforts during the 2022 elections by coordinating attempts to intimidate voters at ballot drop boxes. Jennings even took credit for armed men who staked out drop boxes in Arizona. Media Matters, [11/15/23; The New York Times, 11/1/22]
Right-wing “Stop the Steal” activist Scott Presler, who has previously pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, called on Donald Trump Jr.'s Rumble podcast audience to become poll workers and to investigate county voter rolls in Pennsylvania.Media Matters, [9/5/24, 1/30/23]
True the Vote is planning to monitor ballot drop boxes for supposed fraud, including partnering with Steven Crowder and “working with sheriffs”
True the Vote claims to be planning to monitor ballot drop boxes in Michigan and Wisconsin with “24/7 streaming video” that will be “available for anyone.” On War Room, founder Catherine Engelbrecht declared, “This cycle, we do intend to have eyes on those drop boxes with surveillance footage.” Media Matters, [9/5/24]
True the Vote also claims it “is reaching out to sheriffs across the country” to monitor ballot drop boxes.In different media interviews, Engelbrecht claimed to be working with “three very influential sheriffs” in Wisconsin and said the organization is offering local sheriffs “camera equipment” to monitor drop boxes and, in exchange, the public can livestream the footage to “see for themselves what’s happening.” Media Matters, [8/6/24]
YouTuber Steven Crowder is apparently “partnering” with True the Vote for “the scoop” from the group’s drop box monitoring.True the Vote claims it has been “setting up teams and schedules for drop boxes” to monitor “with a little handheld camera” in multiple states and says Crowder is “opening up” the organization’s efforts “to a whole new crowd.” Media Matters, [10/19/24]
## Right-wing groups have launched apps, hotlines, and websites for people to report supposed voter fraud and issues at the polls on Election Day
True the Vote launched a new app for users “to quickly report problems at the polls” and “document and report instances of suspected election fraud” to funnel to local law enforcement.True the Vote claims to be “working with sheriffs” in Wisconsin and plans to funnel reports of supposed “problems at the polls” from users of its new app. Media Matters, [9/12/24, 9/20/24, 8/6/24]
Election denial group The America Project launched an app “for people to hop on and report different things that they see that they know are illegal,” as described by the group’s Director of Rights & Freedoms, Amanda Freytes.The America Project was founded by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who following the 2020 election, became one of the country’s biggest election denial funders. Twitter/X, [10/5/24; Media Matters, 1/26/23]
Right-wing group United Sovereign Americans launched a new “election complaint” webpage, where people can submit supposed voter fraud to authorities.Founder Marly Hornik has promoted the webpage on War Room. CNN, [10/23/24; Democracy Docket, 5/29/24]
Judicial Watch announced it “will run an Internet hotline for voters in all states to report suspicions of election and voter fraud.”The hotline’s poster asks people to send Judicial Watch a detailed email “if you witness any suspicious activity at your polling place, have issues with your voting machine, or witness voter fraud or intimidation.” Judicial Watch, accessed [10/23/24, 10/23/24]
* YouTuber Steven Crowder touted a plan to have “boots on the ground” on Election Day because “this already is election theft,” saying there will be a “live electoral integrity map” where his audience can “see any shenanigans going on” in real time.Crowder claimed there will be “investigative journalism units and team leaders, managers in every major swing city.” Crowder also said that he would be “partnering” with True the Vote for “Election Night,” and claimed that they “will have tens of thousands of volunteers” combined “watching hundreds of key polling locations and ballot drop boxes around the country.” Media Matters, [9/23/24; Truth Social, 10/28/24]
Right-wing figures are also encouraging people to monitor for noncitizens voting, or registering to vote
During a so-called election integrity call, election denier Cleta Mitchell called on MAGA activists to watch their local Department of Motor Vehicles for noncitizen voter registration and distribute her group’s materials on the ground.Mitchell said: “There are things you can do in your local communities. Watching at your DMVs, watching - going to your election board, asking your local election officials what are you doing to ensure that noncitizen are not getting registered to vote and getting — we've got sample resolutions. We've got signs, you can download and leaflets you could hand out.” Media Matters, [10/8/24]
On a Rumble live stream, Election Integrity Network leader Kerry Toloczko said that “we don't want noncitizen voting,” and she offered materials for right-wing activists who are planning to monitor for noncitizen voting at the local level.Toloczko, who has also appeared on Newsmax to push baseless claims of noncitizen voting, said that their activists are “everywhere” trying to “suppress the people who are trying to vote unlawfully,” asserting, “We have activists, grassroots activists, so we're handing these [signs] out in churches, in parking lots, in voting centers.” Media Matters, [10/17/24, 10/18/24]
Wisconsin-based talk radio host Vicki McKenna urged her listeners to go to polling locations and “stand with very large signs that say in Spanish, ‘Noncitizens are not permitted to vote in the state of Wisconsin.’” McKenna warned of noncitizens voting and complained that “they don’t want you in the field. They don’t want you participating. They don’t want you observing elections.” 1310 WIBA,*The Vicki McKenna Show*, [10/18/24]
===
mma
October 29, 2024, edition of WZFG The Flag's What's On Your Mind?
CLETA MITCHELL (ELECTION INTEGRITY NETWORK): And so there have been a lot of different changes that have been made in legislation and in statutes around the country. And that's a good thing but it's not enough. We have to do more.
But the biggest thing I think is that the RNC, to their credit, have filed a lot of lawsuits. They haven't won as many as I would have liked but at least they've been aggressive before the election and the other thing is we have citizens, we have so many volunteers who are trained who now know the election code better than most lawyers in their state and they are involved and they're engaged and they're working as poll observers and many of them have become election board members and election officials and so we have a presence and we have eyes on the process that we really didn't have in 2020And of course it makes the left's collective head explode. They hate it. T. hey hate me, they hate the Election Integrity Network, and they hate everything that we're doing which tells me we're on the right track.
RWW 10/28/2024
by
Molly Redden, Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey @ ProPublica: “Put Them in Trauma”: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda
A key ally to former President Donald Trump detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest, defund the Environmental Protection Agency and put career civil servants “in trauma” in a series of previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term.
Alexandra Berzon, Nick Corasaniti, Dylan Freedman and Duy Nguyen @ The New York Times: Inside the Movement Behind Trump’s Election Lies
For years, Republican activists have huddled in video meetings to talk about remaking democracy and plan for the election. The New York Times has obtained the recordings.
Aysha Bagchi @ USA Today: Trump-aligned group is already planning lawsuits over election results
A Trump-aligned group that has filed lawsuits in several swing states challenging voter registration lists is already planning to sue over this year's election results, one of the group's founders told USA TODAY. "We feel compelled to file in defense of this beautiful country," said Marly Hornik, who co-founded United Sovereign Americans in 2023. "We already have signs and numbers coming in of errors inside of the process."
Caleb Howe @ Mediaite: New Elon Musk PAC Ad Calls Kamala Harris ‘Big Ole C Word’: ‘The Worst Part? She’s Proud Of It’
The PAC founded by billionaire Elon Musk in support of Donald Trump dropped a new ad on Sunday labeling Vice President Kamala Harris “a C word” that America “can’t afford.”
Amethyst Martinez @ The Daily Beast: Cross-Waving Trump Rally Speaker Calls Harris the ‘Antichrist’
Donald Trump’s rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden Sunday began on a bizarre note. A man [David Rem] with a prop crucifix was one of the opening acts, calling Vice President Kamala Harris the “antichrist” and “the devil.”
Christopher Mathias @ HuffPost: Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe Performs Wildly Racist Set At Trump Rally In New York City
Two hours before Donald Trump was set to take the stage at Madison Square Garden in New York City, right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe warmed up the crowd with a shockingly racist performance.
===
REF NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/28/us/politics/inside-the-movement-behind-trumps-election-lies.html
Inside the Movement Behind Trump’s Election Lies
IFrame Content
IFrame Content
For years, Republican activists have huddled in video meetings to talk about remaking democracy and plan for the election. The New York Times has obtained the recordings.
By Alexandra Berzon, Nick Corasaniti, Dylan Freedman and Duy Nguyen
Oct. 28, 2024
In the aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020, one of his election lawyers set out to keep the lies about his loss alive.
The lawyer, a well-connected conservative named Cleta Mitchell, knit together grass-roots activists, Republican lawyers, party officials and deep-pocketed advocacy groups into a vast national network. The aim was nothing less than remaking American elections.
Over the past four years, Ms. Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network has done more than any other group to take Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about corruption in the democratic system and turn them into action.
Muted
Justrememberthatwhatwearecollectivelytryingtodoissaveourcountryfromtheradicalleft.That’swhatwe’redoing.Andtheyarefixatedontheelectionprocessbecausetheyknowthatiftheycanmanipulatetheprocess,theycangeneratethepolicyoutcomesthattheywant.Andthat’swhattheydidin2020.That’swhytheydidit.
Cleta Mitchell, August 2022.
Its participants have propelled specious theories from corners of the internet into the halls of Congress. They successfully lobbied for new state election laws and procedures, diving deep into the intricacies of election regulations. They have fanned out in neighborhoods on the hunt for evidence of election fraud.
And they have huddled in private, weekly meetings, methodically laying the groundwork that could be used to contest a Trump defeat.
The New York Times has obtained recordings of more than 400 of those meetings, over 400 hours of conversations, along with additional documents and training materials. It is a trove that provides an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at how misinformation is used to manufacture a movement.
IFrame Content
IFrame Content
The Election Integrity Network held more than 400 videoconference meetings.
Even as it claims to be nonpartisan and grass-roots, Ms. Mitchell’s network has closely coordinated with the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee. It found an audience with several election officials, including four Republican secretaries of state, as well as more than a dozen state legislators.
Pillars of the conservative movement — groups funded by the megadonors Rebecca Dunn, Richard Uihlein, as well as the Bradley Impact Foundation and others — provided organizational and financial backing. The network was initially a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a group associated with Mark Meadows, a chief of staff in the Trump White House. Citizens for Renewing America, a related group founded by Russell T. Vought, a close Trump ally, also contributed money early on, according to public records.
Ms. Mitchell and others who played pivotal roles in Mr. Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election, including the former law professor John Eastman, the architect of the fake electors scheme, advised the ranks of activists as they sought to remove thousands of voters from the rolls and pushed to reimagine how elections are certified.
Right-wing media outlets, including Gateway Pundit and the Federalist, joined the calls and later publicized the activists’ work to sympathetic readers across the internet.
All of this coordination allowed debunked theories to jump from state to state. The network was instrumental in prompting state officials, in rapid succession, to abandon a widely regarded election data system, for example.
Earlier this year, Ms. Mitchell said she was called by God to shift her attention to the possibility that noncitizens were voting. Now, in the final weeks of the campaign, Republicans across the country, chief among them Mr. Trump, are wholly convinced of the baseless claims that Democrats are registering undocumented immigrants in droves in a plot to steal the election.
Ms. Mitchell’s network nurtured a cast of amateur election sleuths and armchair experts who often see evidence of election fraud in processes that they misinterpret. In Nevada, they tried to have dozens of voters tossed off the rolls because they did not live in the state, only to learn some of the voters were members of the military posted overseas.
When a retired family doctor in Georgia claimed to have designed new software that could identify ineligible voters, the Texas attorney general called and asked how he could help, the records show. Experts said the methodology was fundamentally flawed.
These activists are now embedded in the nation’s election system. Some sit on election boards, where they will be tasked with certifying results. Thousands will serve as poll monitors and workers posted at precincts across swing states where they will document what they say are signs of malfeasance or fraud.
Asked for comment, Ms. Mitchell said the activists “are dedicated to reclaiming our election systems to help ensure that the elections are conducted in accordance with applicable law, that the process is fully transparent and that election officials count the votes accurately.”
While it’s impossible to know precisely what will happen after next week’s election, if Mr. Trump loses and contests the results, members of Ms. Mitchell’s network are standing at the ready.
‘God Put This On My Heart’
I’vebeeninvolvedinelectionintegrity, electionlawforalong time,butitwasonly reallyearlierthisyear,inJanuaryofthisyear,thatIbegantoreally thinkaboutit.Isaid,Ithink God put thisonmy heart.SoIreallyneededtopayattentiontothissituationandtolearnasmuchasIcouldaboutwhatactuallyishappeningwithregardtocitizenandnoncitizensgettingonthevoterrollsandvoting.
Cleta Mitchell, May 2024.
Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and scores of subsequent recounts, audits and studies, some conducted by Republicans, turned up no evidence of widespread problems with the vote. Similarly, there is no research to support the claim that people who are not citizens vote in large numbers in the United States. Voter fraud is extremely rare.
Ms. Mitchell had been a prominent Republican election lawyer for decades, a veteran of the long-running debates over tightening voter ID requirements and cleaning up voter rolls.
But in 2020, working as a lawyer for Mr. Trump, she took her work in a different direction. She supported the plan to send Trump electors to Congress from states where he lost the vote. She was on the call with Mr. Trump as he badgered Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” the votes he needed to win.
After these efforts failed, she mobilized in a new way. She brought together veterans of the Tea Party movement, G.O.P. stalwarts and some new faces. She helped create some 30 state chapters and set up the weekly phone calls. Ms. Mitchell embraced a list of far-fetched and unfounded theories about election corruption and sold her new network as the vehicle to “save the country.”
In one meeting in May, she told Michigan activists, “this hijacking of our elections by illegals” was one of the ways the “left is thinking they’re going to control the outcome of the 2024 election.”
“But we’re onto them,” Ms. Mitchell said.
“That’s right, your army’s onto them, Cleta,” Patrice Johnson, the leader of the Michigan offshoot group, responded.
One of her first moves after what she described as her revelation about noncitizens casting ballots was to start clamoring for a federal bill that would require all voters to submit proof of citizenship, Ms. Mitchell said. She worked on the legislation and personally urged the House speaker, Mike Johnson, to make it a priority, she told activists on a call.
The bill failed. But Representative Chip Roy of Texas noted that the theories about noncitizen voting still served a political purpose. They joined together two issues that energize Republicans — worry about election integrity and border policy.
“It smashes those into one that puts Democrats on the defensive,” he said at a meeting in September, adding: “It should stay front and center as long as we can make it front and center.”
Forging an Alliance
Iknowthattimeisshortto save our republic ,butatthesametime,Ibelievethatwearemakingbiggerstridesthantheleftiscertainlyacknowledging.Iknowwe’remakingmorestridesthanourownsideunderstands.
Ron Armstrong, Michigan activist, Sept. 2023.
From the beginning, they were strange bedfellows.
There were throngs of activists angry at party leaders for what they saw as insufficient support for Mr. Trump, people still holding on to wild, repeatedly debunked notions about hacked election machines.
And there was a Republican Party that had taken a cautious and pragmatic approach, still not entirely beholden to Mr. Trump but wanting to use the activists to win elections.
Joining them together wasn’t easy.
On one call last year, Richard Silvestri, an activist in Michigan, railed against the party as being “for the same old same old” before realizing a party official, Matthew Seifried, was on the call. Mr. Seifried then defended the R.N.C.’s efforts to protect elections.
“This has been an uneasy alliance for us all over the country between the grass roots and the Republican Party,” Ms. Mitchell said on a call right after the 2022 midterms.
A spokeswoman for the R.N.C., Claire Zunk, said in a statement that the party had assembled an “unprecedented election integrity operation,” but did not comment on the Election Integrity Network.
The R.N.C. had played a critical role from the start. Its staff members helped organize kickoff events. It recruited the activists to be poll workers and poll watchers, helping the party fulfill its ambitions to have eyes on precincts across the country.
To comply with the tax code, the network presented itself as a nonpartisan group focused only on “election integrity.”
Members who accidentally slipped into partisanship were occasionally chided. During a July meeting shortly after Mr. Trump was shot, Janine Iyer, a volunteer leader with Michigan Fair Elections, praised the former president for trying to “save our country” and displayed an image of him raising his fist.
Almost instantly, Elizabeth Ayoub, the communications director for Michigan Fair Elections, chimed in: “Janine! We need to get this off the screen, and we need to stop talking about one candidate.”
More recently, overtly Trump-aligned groups have joined on the calls. One, Turning Point Action, is running get-out-the-vote operations on behalf of the Trump campaign. When a representative from the group joined a call with Michigan activists in April, he urged them to help with Republican voter turnout.
Ms. Johnson, who leads the network’s Michigan affiliate and a related political nonprofit, said the groups were not affiliated with a party and did not help Republican candidates. “It is hardly a conspiracy theory to point out the vulnerabilities in our elections system and to ask penetrating questions,” Ms. Johnson said in a statement.
The activists’ political views were unmistakable. Ms. Mitchell and other leaders within the network discussed their belief that “the left” rigged elections — either through policies that make it easier to vote, such as mail ballots or early voting, or through outright fraud and cheating. The only way that Republicans can have a shot, the activists said, was to change the system.
Planning for November
Wearerecruitingmassivenumbersofelectionworkersandelectionobserversaroundthecountry.Andthat’swhatweneedpeopletogetinvolvedintheelection.Andthenbeyondthat,we need turnout that’s too big to rig.
Ned Jones, Election Integrity Network official, Aug. 2024.
Republican losses in the midterm elections left the network looking for a new, more aggressive strategy for 2024. It settled on a mass effort to rid the voter rolls of people believed to be ineligible.
John Richards Jr., the doctor from Georgia, developed a software system he said could be used to identify suspicious voter registrations. On conference calls, leaders instructed activists to pore over records and go searching for evidence that voters’ addresses were wrong.
They knocked on doors, drove by parking lots, looked up utility records and took photos. They discussed searching for voters with “ethnic names,” even as Ms. Mitchell cautioned against intimidating voters. Their material ended up in affidavits delivered to election offices as activists in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and other states petitioned officials to have tens of thousands of voters removed. Election officials rejected most of their challenges.
Still, network leaders have not given up. They plan to use this mass data collection to arm local activists with names of voters to challenge if they cast ballots.
The Republican National Committee and other conservative groups have piggybacked on this work, filing lawsuits that claimed the voter rolls were larded with illegal voters, including large numbers of noncitizens.
The network’s leaders don’t often discuss the endgame of this work. But some have suggested the data could be used to challenge the results.
Andtherearesomecaseswherewe’regoingtohavecloseelections.Andwhenallelsefails,ifanelection,ifyouknow,anofficialthatlostacloseelectionknowsthatthereweresomeillegitimatevotesthatwerecastorquestionablevotesthatwerecast.Theycouldusethisinformationthatwehavepotentiallytotochallengetheelection.
Jim Womack, leader of the network's North Carolina affiliate, August 2024.
On a call in September, an activist working with United Sovereign Americans, an election-denial organization, said the supposed errors in the voter rolls “are all reason to say that the election certification process is not valid.”
Until 2020, certification was largely viewed as the ceremonial process of recording the official election results. But Mr. Trump’s allies, many affiliated with the Election Integrity Network, have pushed to redefine the role.
Local election officials can and should refuse to certify if they believe there was something wrong with the election — or if they want more time to investigate, they have argued. In Michigan, the network’s affiliate wrote and distributed a guidebook for county canvass board members that suggests they can conduct investigations before voting to certify.
“There’s a real push to certify quickly, and I think this is, I hate conspiracies, but I think this is a strategy,” Mr. Jones said during a July meeting. “That’s why we need to get people on these electoral boards who resist the pressure, and do it right.”
The network has put activists in position to do just that, encouraging members to run for local posts or work their way into the system through county and state parties.
Now, three women associated with the network hold key positions in the state. They were involved in recent attempts to make it easier for State Election Board members to hold up certification while they conduct inquiries into the vote. The effort failed in court.
But the network is looking beyond this election — with broader ambitions.
Working with the American Legislative Exchange Council, the network has written model legislation about noncitizen voting for state legislatures. Ms. Mitchell has talked about a federal elections overhaul should Republicans win the White House and Congress.
For Ms. Mitchell, it was never just about one election. It was about starting a movement.
“And we just have to keep remembering, we’re about the business of saving our country. And this wasn’t necessarily a great outcome for a battle, but I’m not prepared to throw in the towel and say that we’ve lost the war to save the country,” she said on a call after Republicans lost key races in the 2022 midterms. “I don’t think that any of us can even think that. I can’t think that. I’ll do it as long as I have breath in me.”
MELISSA MACKENZIE?
October 23, 2024, edition of American Spectator's The Spectacle
CLETA MITCHELL: Why do you think that they are attacking the Supreme Court so heavily? They're attacking the Supreme Court because they know that that is who will ultimately have to step in. That is the last step before we're talking about guns in this country.
You know, I remember realizing my first semester in law school that the law really is what keeps us from having people going out and shooting each other. The law has replaced dueling. And I think that we have to have and we need an independent judiciary - I should come back to that in a moment. You made a comment about the judicial system. Let me tell you, it's shocking the difficulty that we have had in trying to get election laws upheld and violations of election laws stopped because of, I think, a very feckless judiciary but that's - set that aside.
I think the Supreme Court may be called upon to have to step in and save the election results and, you know, just like they did in 2020, whether we like it or not and I don't like the way they handled it. I think they could have resolved some of these things by hearing the case of all the states that sued because of the problems in the States that handed the election to Biden. And I think that things might have been different these last four years in terms of the way people feel about the election process.
But the Supreme Court is not going to be able to take a bye. I think that they may have to be - and I would hope that they are preparing to do that very thing because I think one of the reasons that they went so hard after the January 6th people and all is because they wanted to rub that in and create a framework where they can do what they've accused, wrongfully accused the J6ers of doing.
mma pix
October 23, 2024, edition of American Spectator's The Spectacle
CLETA MITCHELL (ELECTION INTEGRITY NETWORK): They started changing the election laws so that Republicans can't win. And they - and I will tell you in states that have all mail-in voting, they don't even have polling places, it is impossible, I think for Republicans to have a fair shot again.
...
I'm hopeful that because we have shined the light, for instance, I'll just take the issue that I'm most concerned about is noncitizen voting. I became concerned about that earlier this year when I started really putting all the pieces together and looking at it and thinking, oh my gosh, the picture that has emerged from this is that it is really easy for noncitizens to get added to the voter rolls and there is really not much we can do about it under the current system and so we worked hard to create noise about the issue.
And you know, I worked hard to get the SAVE Act introduced. Chip Roy and Mike Lee introduced it and then I kept badgering Speaker Johnson and then he embraced it and went to Mar-A-Lago, got the president, they endorsed it. And so there's all - So now people are aware of the threat of noncitizen voting and the same is true for the overseas voting. UNIFORM MILITARY?!
...
It is pretty clear to me that -- that the Democrats see noncitizens, illegals, literally as their future power base. That is not conjecture.
…
The Democrats and their left-wing allies, they are all about getting noncitizens, aliens, interjected and a part of our political system in America.
//
Election denier Cleta Mitchell calls on MAGA activists to watch their Department of Motor Vehicles for noncitizen voter registration
10/09/24 10:20 AM EDT
10/23/24 4:05 PM EDT
Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky defends voter purges weeks before Election Day
10/23/24
mma
October 8, 2024, Rumble livestream of Steve Stern's Election Integrity call
CLETA MITCHELL: I want to talk about noncitizen voting. We have absolutely been working since the early part of this year to raise awareness about the threats of noncitizen voting. And that is something that we have - we built a website. It's www.onlycitizensvotecoalition.com, onlycitizensvotecoalition.com.
And go to that website. Look at the resources. There are things you can do in your local communities. Watching at your DMVs, watching - going to your election board, asking your local election officials what are you doing to ensure that noncitizen are not getting registered to vote and getting - we've got sample resolutions. We've got signs, you can download and leaflets you could hand out. But raising awareness, until we can get these laws changed, raising awareness is about all that we can do at this point, but it's really important. And so anything that you can do to try to raise awareness in your communities about the threat of noncitizens voting, please do that.
mma 10 24
On War Room, “Fight Voter Fraud” founder offers MAGA audience voter data for mass eligibility challenges in Georgia
Linda Szynkowicz: “You can have a list of people in your county that we believe should not be voting”
Written by Madeline Peltz
Research contributions from John Knefel
Published 10/07/24
On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Fight Voter Fraud founder Linda Szynkowicz encouraged her MAGA audience to request voter data so they can challenge the eligibility of people they believe should not have ballot access in Georgia.
Szynkowicz’s call to action comes amid a wave of harassment against election officials — and could potentially turn this tactic on the general voting public.
Video
CitationFrom the October 7, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
“Go to our website, download the request data so you can have a list of people in your county that we believe should not be voting in your county, and you can actually hang on to those,” Szynkowicz said during the October 7 episode. “Do your due diligence. We’ll even teach you how to do it.”
Szynkowicz specifically singled out Georgia, where county election boards across the state are dealing with large batches of these voter challenges. From The Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Mass voter challenges have become a new front in the battle between partisan activists and local election boards. State laws passed in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election have empowered activists to contest an unlimited number of voters within the same county.
But a majority of challenges are rejected by county boards. Election officials often say the challenges lack credible evidence to prove that the challenged voter moved to a new state or jurisdiction, died or broke some other rule making them ineligible to vote.
“Over 350,000 voter challenges have been lodged since 2020,” the article continues. “County election officials have rejected the vast majority.”
Voter challenges in Georgia have been a tactic of national election denial groups. Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump lawyer and founder of the Election Integrity Network, developed software called Eagle AI that empowers “MAGA activists to generate mass voter challenges.” According to Documented, “Activists affiliated with EIN in states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida are already testing the Eagle AI system, and setting up meetings with election officials to normalize the program and encourage them to accept voter challenges generated by the platform.”
The Brennan Center for Justice notes that these types of challenges can be “intimidating” and “spread disinformation” when they are cited “as ‘proof’ that ineligible people are voting.” Former President Donald Trump, right-wing media, and GOP Congress members have fearmonged about the imaginary threat of mass noncitizen voting to create a cloud of doubt around November’s presidential election results.
mma 9 10 24
October 1, 2024, edition of Resolute Protector Foundation's The Bill Walton Show
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): The pattern is that Democrats are basing their political future on noncitizens. That is part of their national global plan for their political power. And why? If you cannot sell your policies and your proposals for the country to turn America into a Marxist, one world country, destroy our sovereignty, well, what do you do if you can't persuade a majority of the electorate? You just change the electorate. That's what this is about. It is by design. It is not an accident.
BILL WALTON (HOST): Well, we've been shouted down when we say the great, we talk about the great replacement theory. But listening to this and everything else, it's a fact. I mean, this is the strategy. It's the great replacement scheme.
mma
October 1, 2024, edition of Resolute Protector Foundation's The Bill Walton Show
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): But one of the reasons it matters in Wisconsin is because we know Wisconsin is a very close state. We know that the presidential election was decided by approximately 20,000 votes in 2020. And we know that there are very active left-wing groups, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, who are responsible for many, many thousands of illegals that they are bringing all over the state of Wisconsin and the Department of Transportation has signs posted everywhere saying no birth certificate, no documents, no problem. They will give you an ID which looks exactly like it looks exactly like a driver's license. There's no distinguishing characteristic. And they have same day voter registration in Wisconsin. So all you have to do is show up with your ID that looks like a driver's license and you're given a ballot.
Project 2025 partners are lining up behind the SAVE Act
Civil rights groups have called the SAVE Act "both unnecessary and dangerous”
Written by Sophie Lawton
Published 09/11/24 mma
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says he is “resolved” to tie the SAVE Act to a continuing resolution required to fund the federal government until the spring. Some Project 2025 leaders and partner organizations have been promoting the legislation and have expressed support for the move by Johnson.
The “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility” or “SAVE” Act, reportedly drafted by a combination of election deniers and Project 2025 contributors, would ban noncitizens from voting — something which is already illegal and exceedingly rare. Civil rights groups have condemned the SAVE Act as “both unnecessary and dangerous” as it may “intimidate members of immigrant communities and communities of color from exercising their lawful right to vote.” The bill was passed in the House in July with President Biden promising to veto it if passed by the Senate.
During her opening statement at a subcommittee hearing on the SAVE Act, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, called the legislation an “anti-voter bill” and stated that it was “crafted with the help of election deniers and some of the architects of Project 2025” — one of whom, Cleta Mitchell, testified on behalf of the legislation during the hearing.
Since Johnson’s decision to connect the controversial legislation to a possible government shutdown, Project 2025 leaders and partners have been defending his decision and endorsing the SAVE Act.
The Heritage Foundation
In a September 9 op-ed, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and Heritage Action for America Executive Vice President Ryan Walker called the continuing resolution “the way forward” for Republicans. Roberts and Walker claim in the piece that the SAVE Act will “ensure” that the election is not “diluted by the ballots of illegal aliens and other noncitizens.” In response to the argument that noncitizen voting is already illegal, they write, “It is undeniable that the current voting system allows non-citizens to register and vote” due to ineffective voter ID laws.
Walker also previously voiced his support for the SAVE Act in an appearance on Heritage’s Heritage Explains podcast. He claimed “states are still allowing for illegal immigrants to register to vote” and called the legislation a “very reasonable ask.” Walker called on Congress to include the SAVE Act in the continuing resolution before Johnson confirmed his plans.
In an article on The Heritage Foundation’s website, senior communications manager Matthew Tragesser similarly claims that “there is ample evidence … that aliens have registered and voted in past elections” (though he fails to cite any evidence in the piece). Besides promoting enforcement of voter ID legislation specifically around noncitizen voting, Tragresser also suggests “creating a congressional commission to further explore how aliens impact the outcomes of American elections.”
Family Research Council
Tony Perkins of Project 2025 partner organization the Family Research Council recently hosted Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) on his podcast Washington Watch to promote the SAVE Act. Perkins said of the legislation, “The Democrats say it's not needed, that the law already prohibits it. If that's the case, why don't they just go ahead and accept it and make it very clear that they are against illegal voting? But they don't wanna do that.”
On another episode of Washington Watch, Perkins hosted Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) to promote both the SAVE Act and Johnson’s plan for a continuing resolution. Perkins asked the audience, “Would Democrats allow a government shutdown just to thwart an election integrity measure?”
Family Research Council also published an article supportive of the SAVE Act in its blog The Washington Stand, titled “‘Sorely Needed’: Speaker Johnson May Attach SAVE Act to Govt. Funding Bill.”
Conservative Partnership Institute
Project 2025 partner organization the Conservative Partnership Institute published a blog titled “The SAVE Act is a fight worth having,” arguing that Democrats are not supporting the legislation in order “to make sure they can cheat” and falsely claiming that noncitizen voting is a “real and significant problem.”
In a post to X (formerly known as Twitter), Project 2025 and SAVE Act contributor Cleta Mitchell, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute, wrote, “Get behind Speaker Johnson!” in response to his remarks on attaching the SAVE Act to a continuing resolution.
rep. Chip Roy says election deniers and Project 2025 contributors helped draft SAVE Act
Civil rights groups have condemned the bill that would prohibit noncitizen voting, which is already illegal
Written by Madeline Peltz
Research contributions from Sophie Lawton
Published 09/04/24 mma
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), author of the SAVE Act — a bill that would bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections, something which is already illegal — appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room and claimed he drafted the bill in collaboration with election deniers and Project 2025 allies. The House of Representatives is reportedly considering attaching the SAVE Act to a continuing resolution to fund the government, an effort that is unlikely to succeed.
Noncitizen voting is already illegal and exceedingly rare. Civil rights groups have condemned the SAVE Act as “both unnecessary and dangerous”, saying the bill “seeks to intimidate members of immigrant communities and communities from exercising their lawful right to vote.”
“I drafted that bill in the spring alongside our good friends Stephen Miller, our good friends Hans Von Spakovsky, Cleta Mitchell, other good friends of President Trump and patriots across the country who have been fighting for election integrity for years,” he told guest host and former Trump staffer Kash Patel.
Video
CitationFrom the September 3, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Miller, Von Spakovsky, and Mitchell are all directly tied to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing initiative led by the Heritage Foundation that would provide policy and personnel to the next Republican administration.
Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller is one of Trump’s longest serving advisers and speechwriters. He was behind some of the administration’s most notorious policies, including the so-called Muslim ban and family separation policy. After Trump’s defeat, Miller launched America First Legal, a legal nonprofit attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion policies as part of the conservative culture wars.
Miller was directly involved in Project 2025 before recently attempting to distance himself. America First Legal was a member of the advisory board, and Miller appeared in a Project 2025 promotional video for its Presidential Administration Academy, an effort to recruit MAGA activists into government service, which was posted in September 2023.
Miller, an anti-immigrant extremist, has been a longtime proponent of the myth of noncitizen voting. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Miller pushed Trump’s fake electors scheme. In a December 2020 appearance on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, he said, “We have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election.”
Hans Von Spakovsky
Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 author, who The Guardian has described as having “decades-long career,” going back to the 2000 presidential contest, promoting “unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud.” According to ProPublica, von Spakovsky “is a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.”
During the 2000 election, he advised a group that was advocating for purging voter rolls and honored a company “responsible for erroneously scrubbing thousands of disproportionately minority voters from Florida’s rolls.” In 2008, von Spakovsky withdrew from consideration from an appointment to the Federal Elections Commission under President George W. Bush after Democrats refused to bring up his nomination for a vote due to his controversial and politicized views on election administration. According to The Guardian, several former colleagues at the Justice Department objected to his nomination, claiming he “played a major role in the implementation of practices which injected partisan political factors into decision-making on enforcement matters and into the hiring process”.
Von Spakovsky wrote the chapter on the Federal Election Commission in the Project 2025 policy book Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and has frequently appeared in the media to promote the project. He also has promoted the SAVE Act on War Room, claiming the Democrats’ answer that non-citizens voting is already a felony is a weak position by sarcastically saying, “I guess that means all our federal prisons must be empty because fear of the law is keeping all these criminals and other people from violating the law.”
Cleta Mitchell
Cleta Mitchell is a prominent election denier and contributor to Mandate for Leadership. She was previously a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, and has been described as one of two “legal architects” of Trump’s “failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” She is also the founder of the Election Integrity Network and a senior legal fellow at Conservative Partnership Institute. The Conservative Partnership Institute is a Project 2025 partner organization, and Election Integrity Network was originally founded as a project of CPI.
According to The Intercept, Mitchell “played a central role” in Trump’s attempt to block Georgia’ certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Mitchell was reportedly responsible for recruiting discredited lawyer John Eastman to Trump’s campaign in August 2020. Eastman went on to draft the memo that created the predicate for Trump to contest the election in the House of Representatives on January 6, 2021.
She also reportedly “helped funnel money to groups working on the partisan Arizona ballot review that Trump and his allies have twisted to advance their false narrative” about voter fraud.
On a February 2024 appearance on a right-wing radio program, Mitchell said Democrats want to garner votes in the presidential election through undocumented people voting, baselessly claiming it is “one of the reasons the Biden administration is allowing all these illegals to flood the country.”
The SAVE Act passed the House in July 2024. President Joe Biden has promised to veto the bill.
===
Rep. Chip Roy says election deniers and Project 2025 contributors helped draft SAVE Act
09/04/24 mma
===
January 6 supporters champion Georgia State Election Board rule changes
The same crowd of right-wing pundits who attempted to overturn the 2020 election results are now meddling with Georgia’s certification procedures to potentially deny Democrats a win in 2024
Written by John Knefel
Research contributions from Payton Armstrong
Published 09/05/24 mma
Several right-wing media figures tied to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election have supported changes to Georgia’s election certification process that could be used to question or deny the state’s vote totals this November.
These figures include Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin; Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, an election denialist group; mother-daughter “Stop the Steal” activists Amy and Kylie Jane Kremer (the former is also a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots); and former Trump adviser and attorney Cleta Mitchell, founder of the Election Integrity Network.
Notably, Mitchell is also a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute, which — along with Tea Party Patriots — is one of the more than 100 organizations on the advisory board of Project 2025, a sprawling effort to provide a second Trump administration with policy and staffing proposals. Project 2025 is also run through with election deniers.
Several of the outside groups pushing the changes appear to hold at least some real power in Georgia as well. In May, Fulton County election board member Julie Adams — who is reportedly affiliated with the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network — refused to certify the primary election results. ProPublica further reported that a former board member brought one of the new rule changes forward at the “behest” of Adams, a “regional leader” in the Election Integrity Network who joined the Fulton County election board in February.
Adams isn’t the only new, hard-right election official. In May, the Georgia House speaker appointed Janelle King, a right-wing media personality, to the State Election Board, where she has supported the August rule changes. King has a history of spreading election denial conspiracy theories; in March 2021, she wrote on Facebook that “Republicans produce real proof of voter irregularities and fraud in some cases; stuff like, voting twice, voting from another state, stuff like that to name a few.”
The Georgia State Election Board’s hard-right turn
In early August, the Georgia State Election Board made changes to its certification process that would “require county election officials to make a ‘reasonable inquiry’ before certifying election results to the state,” as reported by The Associated Press. Voting rights advocates worry that the vagueness of the new rule will provide a pretext to delay or deny potential Democratic wins in November.
Later that month, the board made an additional change providing county election officials with the authority to access “all election-related documentation” and resolve any discrepancies prior to certification — another potential avenue to sow doubt and confusion about vote totals. State Democrats have since brought a lawsuit challenging the board’s new rules.
At a rally in Atlanta on August 3, Trump praised the Republican members of the State Election Board by name, including King, calling them “three pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.” Trump’s comments appear to signal that the board’s changes could be a crucial part of his strategy to undermine confidence in the vote totals if the Republican nominee loses the state in November.
Jenny Beth Martin and Tea Party Patriots
Martin is a significant figure in the election denial movement. Her organization, Tea Party Patriots, sponsored a Trump rally in D.C. ahead of the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, and Martin herself was outside the Capitol that day. According to Talking Points Memo, Martin “helped connect the political, legal, and activist elements of the push to keep Trump in power” and even communicated with Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff and an instrumental figure in the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Meadows faces charges in Arizona and Georgia for his role in Trump's scheme, and he is also a senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute.
On August 10, Martin appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's War Room podcast to celebrate the Georgia State Election Board’s rule changes.
“They are clarifying what certification means, which is very important, especially if you are on an election board and you have questions and don’t quite know that — don’t think what you’re certifying is actually the final vote,” Martin said. “They need to get it right before certification.”
Video
CitationFrom the August 10, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Martin returned to War Room on August 27 to further praise the state board’s new policies and baselessly sow doubt about recent election results.
“These are not strange, draconian, hard things to enact,” Martin said. “Why doesn’t the left want these common sense changes to happen? That’s the real question.”
She later added: “We need to have elections we can have faith and trust in, and that’s what these board members are trying to accomplish.”
Video
CitationFrom the August 27, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Martin also hosts a podcast, The Jenny Beth Show, where she recently interviewed Salleigh Grubbs, the head of the Cobb County Republican Party. Grubbs gained some notoriety in right-wing media circles in 2020 after “following a truck she suspected of being used in a plot to shred evidence,” according to ProPublica. She later attended Trump’s January 6 event, and would continue to spread conspiracy theories about “irregularities in the election,” as reported in The Washington Post.
During the September 4 interview, Martin and Grubbs discussed the new Georgia rules. State and county election officials “are there to be a check and balance,” Martin said.
“That’s right,” Grubbs responded.
Martin added, “This is just another place to make sure that you’ve got another set of eyes and that you’re checking that everything really is what the report says it is.”
Catherine Engelbrecht and True the Vote
Martin was joined on War Room’s August 27 episode by Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote and another prominent election denialist. Engelbrecht and her business partner, Gregg Phillips, served as primary sources for 2000 Mules, a discredited conspiracy theory film from Dinesh D’Souza that falsely claimed there had been mass voter fraud in the 2020 election. In addition to participating in the film, True the Vote challenged Georgia’s 2020 election results, claiming it had obtained evidence of a mass ballot stuffing operation. When a judge later asked for the evidence, the group admitted it had none.
Like Martin, Engelbrecht praised the Georgia State Election Board, and she was even more explicit in her baseless accusations that Democrats were attempting to rig the election system.
“The Democrats are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that the fraud we’ve seen coming out of Georgia over these last few years, that that remains institutionalized,” Engelbrecht said. “I applaud the State Election Board, and even more than that I applaud the people of Georgia who have fought tirelessly to try to bring elections back to some semblance of common sense in their state, and they’re doing a great job.”
“The Democrat Party is opposed for all of the obvious reasons, but I’ll state the obvious, and that is that they intend to manipulate and exploit the weaknesses wherever they can,” she added.
### Cleta Mitchell and the Election Integrity Network
Prior to founding the Election Integrity Network, Mitchell served as a campaign adviser to then-President Trump while he was attempting to overturn the 2020 election. She participated in a call during which Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” more than 11,000 votes, enough to throw the election to him. A grand jury later recommended indicting Mitchell for her role in Trump’s efforts to stay in power, though prosecutors in Fulton County declined to charge her.
Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network has issued at least two formal press releases in favor of the Georgia election changes.
On August 13, EIN issued a statement urging the passage of new rules that would “demand accurate counts before certifying elections.” Following adoption of the new policy, EIN said the State Election Board had “stood up to left-wing pressure groups and voted to ensure vote-tallies reconcile before certification.”
Mitchell has been a vocal supporter of the Georgia election board meddling. On August 3, she celebrated Trump’s speech singling out the three State Election Board members who later voted in favor of the new rules.
CitationFrom Cleta Mitchell's account on X/Twitter, accessed August 30, 2024
Since then, Mitchell has written at least five other posts in favor of the changes or criticizing opponents of the moves — including praising Trump-aligned board member Janelle King.
“GA State Election Board Member Janelle King is smart, tough, and conservative,” Mitchell wrote. “She stands for the rule of law and election integrity - leftists hate that. We are with you Janelle!”
Amy and Kylie Jane Kremer
Longtime tea party activist Amy Kremer helped organize the January 6, 2021, rally where Trump instructed the crowd to “fight like hell” and march to the U.S. Capitol. Her daughter, Kylie Jane, created a “Stop the Steal” Facebook group following the 2020 election that ballooned to 350,000 members over the course of a day. The duo previously founded the pro-Trump group Women for America First in 2019.
Following Joe Biden’s inauguration, Amy Kremer pushed for an “audit” of the Georgia vote totals, similar to a sham audit Trump allies pursued in Arizona. More recently, she successfully ran for a seat on the Republican National Committee in a campaign that was supported by Steve Bannon.
Both Amy and Kylie Jane Kremer have repeatedly supported the Georgia State Election Board rule changes. On August 19, Amy Kremer accused Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Attorney General Chris Carr, and Gov. Brian Kemp — all Republicans — of “standing in the way &/or running interference to stop the GA State Election Board from securing GA’s elections & investigating election fraud.”
CitationFrom Amy Kremer's account on X/Twitter, accessed September 3, 2024
Amy Kremer has repeatedly cast doubt on Georgia’s election systems throughout August, and responded to the Democrats’ lawsuit challenging the changes by asking Carr, “What are you going to do about this?”
Kylie Jane Kremer has similarly criticized Kemp, Raffensperger, and Carr, writing on August 3 that they’re “like the three amigos who steal elections.” On August 26, she praised Trump-aligned State Election Board member Janelle King. One day later, she urged her followers to show the board “the support they deserve as they stand strong for Georgians against attacks from Governor Kemp, SOS Brad Raffensperger, AG Chris Carr and Democrats!”
Raffensperger, who famously declined Trump’s request to “find” enough votes to overturn Georgia’s election results in 2020, has now spoken out against the State Election Board rule changes. As of late August, Kemp hadn’t publicly commented on the changes, though his office referred an ethics complaint against the pro-Trump board members to the attorney general’s office. Carr released an official opinion stating that the State Election Board can’t force him to reopen an investigation into the vote totals in Fulton County in 2020, as requested by Trump’s allies on the board.
an 8 24
[vid]
When
, that Donald Trump would not concede the presidential election if he lost, Trump's defenders accused the "Real Time" host of having "Trump derangement syndrome." But Trump, just as Maher predicted, refused to admit defeat after losing the 2020 election to now-President Joe Biden.
Now, four years later, a variety of Trump critics — from Maher to Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias — are warning that Trump will do the same thing again if he loses the 2024 election.
But The Guardian's Sam Levine, in an article published on August 12, stresses that there is a crucial difference between 2020 and 2024: Trump and his MAGA allies "may be better prepared" to steal the election this time.
READ MORE:Trump is losing it because he's afraid of losing
"(Cleta) Mitchell, a close Trump ally, has spent the last few years building up a network of activists focused on local boards of elections," Levine explains. "And the Republican National Committee's election litigation team is now being led by Christina Bobb, an election denier who is now facing criminal charges for her efforts to overturn the 2020 race."
The reporter continues, "The RNC claims it is recruiting an army of 100,000 poll observers who could provide significant disruption during voting and counting…. But more significantly, the idea that the 2020 election was stolen has moved from the fringes to being a pillar of the Republican Party. A January poll from PRRI found that 66 percent of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen."
Elias laments that election denialism has become the GOP's "standard position."
The attorney and Democracy Docket publisher told The Guardian, "I think we saw efforts by Republicans in 2020 that were pretty ham-handed. I worry that there will be both legal and extralegal efforts by Republicans to keep ballots from being counted."
READ MORE:['Has he met his boss?' Vance mocked after whining about Dems turning tables on the GOP
Similarly, Ben Berwick, an attorney for Protect Democracy, told The Guardian, "It's all part of creating sort of a pretext to say, 'Oh, we need to throw out this set of ballots' or 'We can't really know who the real winner is.' I think much of it won't stick, but I think the point is to have enough of it stick to create enough uncertainty for that critical post-election period."
Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University, told The Guardian he is "definitely concerned" that there will be "a lot of efforts to disturb" vote counting.
Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, believes that MAGA election denialism is much more sophisticated in 2024 than it was four years ago.
Morales-Doyle told The Guardian, "This has started earlier in the cycle and is louder and is more consistent. That is all just at a different level than it was before 2020.”
READ MORE:**Inside the GOP plot to silence Texas voters**
*Read The Guardian's full report at this link.
===
so much for remorse
06/14/24
===
mma 6 24
project 2025 partners use right-wing media to sow distrust in American elections
Several Project 2025 partners were involved in attempts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory and have already cast doubt on the 2024 election
WRITTEN BY AUDREY MCCABE
PUBLISHED 06/04/24
As Project 2025 maps out its conservative agenda for the next GOP presidential administration, several of its partner organizations have employed figures involved in efforts to overturn former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss — and others have already begun sowing distrust in American elections ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Led by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 lays out staffing and policy priorities for Trump’s potential return to the White House. The project has over 100 partners, ranging from extreme anti-LGBTQ groups to prominent conservative think tanks, many of which have employed individuals directly involved in attempts to overturn the 2020 election, including figures who served as Trump’s “fake electors”; urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the electoral count; and pushed disputed legal theories to keep Trump in power. Right-wing media have platformed these individuals, championing their schemes and validating their election lies.
Other partners have turned their sights to the 2024 election, spreading doubts about its legitimacy months before it occurs under the guise of concerns about “election integrity.” Despite lacking evidence of systematic issues across American elections, some of these Project 2025 partner organizations baselessly suggest to their supporters that the 2024 election is being “rigged” as part of “a concerted effort by Democrats,” setting the stage for Trump and his media allies to once again contest the legitimacy of November’s results.
Right-wing media have platformed Project 2025 partner employees who attempted to overturn the 2020 election
American Family Association
The American Family Association hosts a daily radio show with Jenna Ellis, a former Trump lawyer who pleaded guilty to a felony charge over her involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Ellis “amplified former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud as part of what she called a legal ‘elite strike force team’” and wrote legal memos for Trump and his counsel containing “widely disputed legal theories” in an attempt to keep him in power. American Family Association, [1/2/23; The New York Times, 10/24/23; Politico, 12/10/21]
Center for Renewing America
Center for Renewing America’s senior fellow Jeffrey Clark attempted to capitalize on his position in 2020 as a senior Justice Department official to “use federal law enforcement power to undo then-President Donald Trump’s defeat.” Trump’s federal indictment for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results appears to identify Clark as an unindicted co-conspirator, portraying him as a “linchpin of plans to bypass the acting attorney general and use the imprimatur of the Justice Department to spread ‘knowingly false claims of election fraud’ and deceitfully substitute legitimate electors with sham alternates supporting Trump.” The Washington Post, [7/3/23]
During his tenure at Fox News, prime-time star Tucker Carlson defended Clark after his home was searched as part of the January 6 probe, claiming, “There’s no suggestion he committed any crime of anything, that he did anything wrong.”Bannon has also shown his support for Clark by suggesting that he serve as Trump’s next attorney general and invited him on the show to advocate for deploying the military against protesters. (According to The Washington Post, Clark “is leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025.”) Media Matters, [7/1/22, 11/9/23; The Washington Post, 11/5/23]
The Claremont Institute
The Claremont Institute has emerged as “a driving force in the conservative movement’s crusade to use bogus fraud claims about the 2020 election to rewrite voting laws and remake the election system in time for the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election.” Claremont has also promoted stolen election narratives, with its online magazine claiming in a November 5, 2020, editorial titled “The Fight is Now” that Democrats “have all but declared themselves the winners of the 2020 election before the votes are counted,” concluding that “the President and his supporters must publicly rally and protest what any reasonable person would judge looks illegitimate.” Rolling Stone, [1/12/22; The American Mind, 11/5/20]
Claremont Institute board member John Eastman was one of the chief architects of Trump’s legal efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.While working as one of Trump’s election lawyers, Eastman attempted “to solicit GOP state legislatures to send ‘alternate’ electors to Congress” and pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay certifying the election, drafting a memo for Trump’s legal team that has been described as “a blueprint for a coup.” Politico, [3/27/24; The New York Times, 10/2/21]
Right-wing media championed Eastman’s fake elector scheme as it unfolded and frequently welcomed him as a guest on shows. Various figures and outlets defended Eastman’s actions again in 2023 and called for retaliation after a California judge “recommended in March that Eastman be disbarred for his election subversion efforts.” Media Matters, [9/21/21, 6/27/23, 3/29/24; CNN, 5/2/24]
Conservative Partnership Institute
* In 2021, CPI hired Cleta Mitchell, “a Trump adviser and election attorney” who “played a central role in the effort to stop the certification of the election in Georgia and beyond.”The Intercept wrote that Mitchell “was one of the principal players on the infamous call in which Trump implored Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find the 11,780 votes he needed to claim victory.” She later “helped the former president covertly send $1 million to finance the farcical Arizona audit in 2021.” The Intercept, [9/13/23]
Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo gave Mitchell a platform to push election misinformation on her show in the days after the 2020 election.Mitchell questioned the integrity of Dominion Voting Systems’ software and claimed that “we cannot have a situation where people don’t have confidence in the outcome and the tabulation of the votes.” Dominion later won a record $787.5 million settlement from Fox over the network airing “spurious claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential race.” Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Martiromo, [11/10/20; NPR, 4/18/23]
In April, Bannon hosted Mitchell on War Room to defend against a New York Times report on her efforts targeting voter rolls across the country. Mitchell claimed, “We want a lawful election. If we have a lawful election, we have a chance to win. They want to cheat. We have to stop them.” Bannon replied, “If we have a lawful election, Trump wins in a landslide. They have to steal it, they know that.” Media Matters, [3/5/24]
CPI also employs former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, who galvanized the effort to overturn the results in 2020 using “outlandish election conspiracy theories.”Meadows, now a senior partner at CPI, spent Trump’s final weeks in the White House asking the Justice Department “to examine debunked claims of election fraud in New Mexico and an array of baseless conspiracies that held that Mr. Trump had been the actual victor,” including “a fantastical theory that people in Italy had used military technology and satellites to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States.” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported that “filling its ranks with people who undermined democracy has been a financial boon to the group. In each of the two years since, it has brought in at least twice as much money as it did in its first four years of its existence combined.” The New York Times, [6/5/21; CREW, 11/17/23]
In April 2022, unearthed text messages revealed that Meadows was working with several Fox hosts, who were “integral to Trump’s plot to illegally hold onto power after losing the election.” Notably, Bartiromo provided Meadows the questions she’d be asking in advance of an interview with Trump, telling the White House chief of staff that “the public wants to know he will fight this” and people “want to hear a path to victory.” Media Matters, [4/29/22]
Hillsdale College
Robert E. Norton II, general counsel for conservative Christian Hillsdale College, reportedly hosted a meeting in November 2020 with lawyer Ian Northon and several other individuals involved in Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.The New York Times wrote that “the pre-Thanksgiving gathering at Norton’s house presaged broader efforts to thwart the will of Michigan voters, as well as the entanglement of Hillsdale’s administration in the events leading up to Jan. 6.” Norton and Northon, “a Hillsdale alumnus and private lawyer who did work for the college,” later became “involved in a plan to deploy fake Trump electors in Michigan.” The New York Times, [1/8/24]
In December 2020, Northon appeared on Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs Tonight to push a debunked legal theory and claim that state legislatures should appoint their own slate of pro-Trump electors. Northon claimed that state legislatures “need to send a second slate of electors to make sure that there’s accuracy and integrity in the election.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [12/23/20]
Tea Party Patriots
Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin “worked extensively on the legal and political effort to reverse Trump’s defeat” and was in communication with Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.As noted by Talking Points Memo, “Martin attended and spoke at Stop The Steal events in the leadup to Jan. 6. She was also billed as a speaker for ‘Stop The Steal’ activist Ali Alexander’s ‘Wild Protest,’ which was set to take place at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” but “that event was cut short amid the chaos.” Additionally, Martin’s “work in the ‘Stop The Steal’ movement helped connect the political, legal, and activist elements of the push to keep Trump in power.” Talking Points Memo, [5/9/24; NBC News, 5/8/24]
In January, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk hosted Martin on his show to brag about training election-denying activists to “monitor elections.”She appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Roomthe next day and claimed: “When it comes to securing the election, we’re in a much better position right now in 2020 — I mean in 2024 than we were in 2020, way better. In 2022, we trained 20,000 people who went on to be part of the 80,000 people that the RNC placed as poll watchers. That is massive.” Media Matters, [1/30/24]
Turning Point USA
Two men with “deep ties” to right-wing activist group Turning Point USA were among the 11 indicted in Arizona for their role as “fake electors” in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. One of the fake electors, Tyler Bowyer, previously worked as the national field director and chief operating officer of TPUSA and remains the COO of Turning Point Action, the organization’s 501(c)(4) branch. The other fake elector is state Sen. Jake Hoffman, a TPUSA affiliate and contractor. MSNBC, [4/26/24]
Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk criticized the indictment on X, writing, “Democrats and their media flacks are attempting to criminalize a concept they themselves invented and have utilized with impunity.” On his show, Kirk also called the indictment “the death of the rule of law” and suggested that the Arizona attorney general’s office targeted Bowyer with a “legal Tomahawk missile” to interfere with the 2024 election. Twitter/X, [4/25/24; Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 4/25/24]
Other Project 2025 partners have used their own media platforms to cast doubt on the 2024 election
AMAC Action
AMAC Action represents the Association of Mature American Citizens, a group that labels itself “the conservative alternative to the AARP” and publishes articles priming members to believe that the 2024 election will be stolen.The group published an article in March titled “Will The Election Be Rigged?” which claims, “Citizens have reason to be concerned given the significant changes to election practices, including universal mail-in voting, widespread ballot harvesting, and a concerted effort by Democrats to allow illegal aliens to vote in the upcoming election.” Another article titled “Election Fraud Is Real And Needs To Be Fixed Before 2024” claims, “Cheating should not determine the outcome in the highly consequential 2024 national election.” PolitiFact, [12/2/12; AMAC Action, 3/29/24, 11/7/23]
The Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that has published election fraud surveys described as “mind-bogglingly ridiculous” by The Washington Post, claimed that one of its most recent polls shows that “nearly 45 million ballots may be fraudulently cast if they are not prevented.” According to Heartland, “28% of all voters say they would engage in at least one kind of illegal voting practice in order to help their preferred candidate–either President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump—win the 2024 election.” The Washington Post, [12/12/23; The Heartland Institute, 4/16/24]
The Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation has planted seeds of doubt about the reliability of the upcoming election.The Project 2025 leader has published articles in the last year titled “Will Elections Finally Be Secure and Honest in 2024?” and “One Illegal Vote Can Change the Outcome of an Election.” The Heritage Foundation, [1/5/24, 7/13/23]
Despite a lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud, Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts refuses to acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 election.In an interview published this January, Roberts told The New York Times, “Can I say definitively that he won? No.” The New York Times, [1/21/24]
NYT
Pro-Trump Nonprofit Paid Millions to Companies Tied to Its Own Leaders
The Conservative Partnership Institute’s three highest-paid contractors had connections to the group’s leaders or their relatives, raising concerns about self-dealing.
Two men in dark suits shaking hands across a table.
A job fair sponsored by the Conservative Partnership Institute on Capitol Hill in June 2018. The group was founded the year before and aims to help conservatives wield power.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times
David A. Fahrenthold
Reporting from Washington
May 6, 2024
The Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit whose funding skyrocketed after it became a nerve center for President Donald J. Trump’s allies in Washington, has paid at least $3.2 million since the start of 2021 to corporations led by its own leaders or their relatives, records show.
In its most recent tax filings, the nonprofit’s three highest-paid contractors were all connected to insiders.
One was led by the institute’s president, Edward Corrigan, and another by its chief operating officer. At a third contractor, the board members included the group’s senior legal fellow Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Last year, the Conservative Partnership Institute hired a fourth company connected to an insider: a fund-raising firm run by Mr. Corrigan’s brother, Patrick Corrigan. Public filings show the company received a contract three weeks before the firm was legally formed.
The Conservative Partnership Institute applied to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit, and the agency approved. That means donations to the group are tax deductible, like gifts to a food bank or the American Red Cross. It also means that, by law, its money must serve the public good rather than private interests.
The nonprofit has pushed those limits by entwining itself with only one faction of American politics. It pays high salaries to some of Mr. Trump’s former officials, hosts retreats for Republican lawmakers at a rural compound and funds efforts to vet people and ideas for a second Trump term.
Legal experts say these insider transactions also raise concerns about self-dealing. While hiring insiders is permitted when certain safeguards are in place, the payments moved money out of daylight and into opaque entities that the nonprofit’s leaders helped control.
“There’s no checks and balances,” said Michael West, a lawyer at the New York Council of Nonprofits. Because there is no real third party to determine whether the insider-led companies were charging the nonprofit a fair price, Mr. West said, “the potential for overpayment here is epic.”
Mr. Corrigan, the institute’s president, did not respond to questions about what steps the group took to assure that it was not overpaying the insiders’ companies. The companies did not say what rates they charged.
Image
A close-up frame of Edward Corrigan. He is smiling.
Edward Corrigan, the president and chief executive of the Conservative Partnership Institute, at a panel discussion in National Harbor, Md., last year. His group applied to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit and was approved.Credit...Leigh Vogel for The New York Times
Of the insiders who had dual roles at the nonprofit and its vendors, only one responded to questions from The New York Times. Wesley Denton, the institute’s chief operating officer and a former Trump administration official, said he also had been paid by Compass Professional, one of the vendors.
Mr. Denton’s annual compensation, with benefits, from the institute was $391,735. He declined to say how much he received from Compass Professional. He was on the board of both the vendor and the institute.
“We’re proud to have helped launch new, independent, nonprofit service providers that provide high-quality professional services,” Mr. Denton said in a written statement.
The institute’s donors include several Republican political campaigns, as well as conservative businesspeople. One major donor, the retired Texas aviation entrepreneur Robert Bruce, said the nonprofit’s leaders had not told him about their use of vendors with insider connections.
“I’ve never had a conversation like that,” Mr. Bruce said in a phone interview.
He estimated he had given “several hundred thousand” dollars to the institute. Mr. Bruce said he had no concerns that the nonprofit’s leaders were misusing money. “I’ve known them a long time,” he said. “They’re good people.”
The Times traced the relationships between the group’s leaders and their vendors by examining charity and corporate filings with the federal government, five states and the District of Columbia.
The records do not show what share of the $3.2 million went to the institute’s top leaders and their family members — only that the money flowed to companies where they served as an owner or a director. In at least one case, a company failed to flag that connection as required in a state filing.
Image
Two people wearing Trump 2024 hats and clothing.
The Conservative Partnership Institute pays high salaries to former Trump officials, hosts retreats for Republican lawmakers at a rural compound and funds efforts to vet people and ideas for a second Trump presidency.Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
The Conservative Partnership Institute was founded in 2017 by former Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, after he was ousted as the president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit. The group’s aim was to help conservatives wield power, shepherding them “through the Washington swamps without being infected with Potomac Fever,” Mr. DeMint said in 2017.
The institute’s fund-raising actually improved when conservatives lost power.
In 2021, with Democrats in charge in Washington, the institute hired former Trump staff members, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. It began courting donors as the voice of Mr. Trump’s allies and ambitions.
Fund-raising jumped to $45 million in 2021 from $7 million in 2020. The nonprofit, newly flush, bought a 2,200-acre retreat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a series of commercial buildings near the U.S. Capitol, with plans for a restaurant, a school and TV studios. The group also began convening workshops and seminars for conservative lawmakers and staff members as well as seeding new conservative nonprofits.
As the money flowed, the institute’s leaders began to found a series of companies in Delaware.
The first was Compass Professional. Its first annual report listed a slate of directors, including Edward Corrigan and Mr. Denton.
Next was Compass Legal Services. Its initial filing listed directors, including Ms. Mitchell and Charlotte Davis, one of the institute’s board members.
By the end of 2021, the group had paid its companies a combined $639,259, according to an audit that it filed with state-level charity regulators.
Federal law allows nonprofits like this one to hire insiders as long as they properly disclose the payments and ensure the insiders do not overcharge. Legal experts still advise against it because of the temptation for insiders to abuse their power over charity funds.
“You have an obligation to behave in the interest of that organization,” said Linda Sugin, a professor of nonprofit law at Fordham University. “The problem is, when you’re on both sides of the transaction, then we’re skeptical that you’re going to put the organization’s interests before your own.”
Ms. Sugin said the institute could have reduced its risk by soliciting bids from competing firms to gauge whether the insiders were charging market rates. The institute could have asked its leaders to recuse themselves from the decision to hire their own companies, she said.
Mr. Corrigan and other leaders did not respond to questions about whether their group took those steps.
If a nonprofit is found to have given improper benefits to insiders, the insiders could face financial penalties from state or federal regulators. In extreme cases, the I.R.S. could revoke the group’s tax exemption.
In 2022, a third Delaware company was formed: Compass Property Management. Its corporate filings show Mr. Denton as president.
During that year, the nonprofit paid the three insider-connected companies a combined $2.6 million, according to the audit that it filed with states. The institute said those payments were “for the use of facilities, personnel, human resources and other professional services.”
How much of that flowed to the insiders on those vendors’ boards of directors?
Mr. Denton offered only a partial answer.
He said the vendors did not pay their board members solely because they were board members.
However, as in his case, Mr. Denton said the companies could pay their board members for other reasons, for “doing employment work for these organizations, outside of their board duties.” The president of Compass Legal issued a statement saying his company did not pay “outside directors” but did not specify which directors were counted as “outside.”
Compass Professional and Compass Legal have worked for other clients, including Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and Gun Owners of America, according to federal campaign and charity filings. The companies’ leaders did not respond to queries about how much of their business came from the Conservative Partnership Institute.
The most recent data on what the institute paid the three original insider-connected companies is from 2022. Since then, corporate filings show, the companies’ board members have shifted, but Conservative Partnership Institute leaders or their family members remained on the boards of each.
Last year, the institute also hired a company that was partly owned by Patrick Corrigan, Compass Direct LLC, to a fund-raising contract, paying $180,000 over the next year.
In a filing in North Carolina, the institute said that contract began on July 1, 2023. But Patrick Corrigan’s company was not founded until July 24, three weeks after it won the contract.
In its own filings with North Carolina, Patrick Corrigan’s company was asked if he was related “as parent, spouse, child or sibling to ANY officer, director, trustee or employee” as his client, which was his brother’s nonprofit.
In filings for 2023 and 2024, the company answered “no.” Patrick Corrigan signed the forms.
After The Times pointed this out, Patrick Corrigan responded with a one-line email: “The NC filing has been updated,” he wrote. He did not respond to other questions.
Robert Draper and Julie Tate contributed reporting.
David A. Fahrenthold is an investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades. More about David A. Fahrenthold
:{A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2024, Section A, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump-Allied Nonprofit Paid Millions to Firms With Ties to Insiders.
----==
an 4 24
as Donald Trump begins his first criminal trial this week, while facing three other indictments and 88 felony counts, several far-right groups are working tirelessly to ensure MAGA lives on no matter what comes of the ex-president's legal troubles, according to a Tuesday, April 16 report published by The Guardian.
Two of the MAGA hopeful's allies — America First Legal Foundation founder Stephen Miller, and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — were the beneficiaries of "six- and seven-figure checks" from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Bradley Impact Fund's in 2022, as well as "other Trump-friendly bastions such as the Heritage Foundation and Michael Flynn’s America’s Future," the news outlet reports
"The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Bradley Impact Fund have emerged as major forces in Maga circles," Michael Beckel, of the bipartisan political reform organization Issue One told the news outlet.
READ MORE:[Journalist exposes how 'mastermind' Trump adviser Stephen Miller was 'radicalized'
Furthermore, The Guardian reports the nonprofit pair "poured about $165m into dozens of groups including quite a few Trump-allied thinktanks, legal outfits and other advocacy outfits."
Beckel noted, however, "Donor-advised funds like the Bradley Impact Fund allow mega-donors to support organizations while keeping their names out of the spotlight."
The Issue One research director emphasized The Bradley Impact Fund, offers "wealthy mega-donors additional anonymity and help keep donors’ names out of the limelight, even as these individuals contribute large sums to influence elections and policy debates."
Referring to the Bradley Foundation, Lisa Graves, the executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North, said: “It has nearly $1bn in assets. Its board includes the multimillionaire Art Pope, whose personal ambition is to change the political landscape of North Carolina and more to suit his regressive agenda. Mitchell has been playing a significant role in efforts to make it harder for Americans to vote, and harder for Americans to have fair representation through fair maps.”
READ MORE:[Trump ally’s stunning request: 'If this election doesn’t go our way the next day we fight'
She emphasized, "These are substantial investments that are furthering extremists at the forefront of Trump’s agenda."
*The Guardian's full report is available here
guk
Two powerful conservative non-profits have donated millions of dollars to a number of pro-Trump groups led by the key far-right allies Stephen Miller, Charlie Kirk and others that have promoted election denialism, extremist anti-immigrant policies and legal challenges to bolster the Maga movement.
Based in Wisconsin, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Bradley Impact Fund in 2022 separately doled out six- and seven-figure checks to groups such as Miller’s America First Legal and Kirk’s Turning Point USA, and other Trump-friendly bastions such as the Heritage Foundation and Michael Flynn’s America’s Future.
Watchdog groups that track money in politics say the Bradley Foundation and the closely tied Bradley Impact Fund have become increasingly influential in funding the Maga ecosystem in recent years as Trump is all but certain to be the Republican 2024 presidential nominee.
“The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Bradley Impact Fund have emerged as major forces in Maga circles,” said Michael Beckel, the research director for Issue One, a bipartisan political reform group.
The biggest checks in 2022 were written to Trump-allied groups by the dark-money Bradley Impact Fund: America First Legal received about $27.1m, Turning Point USA roped in close to $8m, and the Conservative Partnership Institute pulled in $712,310. America’s Future also received $500,000.
Meanwhile, the Bradley Foundation ponied up $425,000 to the Heritage Foundation, which has worked with many other pro-Trump groups to assemble a 1,000-page plan for a new Trump presidency with an authoritarian agenda to expand executive-branch powers and curb key agencies such as the US justice department.
The Bradley Foundation in 2022 also doled out $750,000 to the pro-Maga FreedomWorks Foundation and $2.9m to the Bradley Impact Fund.
While the larger and older Bradley Foundation launched in 1942 and has almost $1bn in assets, the newer and smaller Bradley Impact Fund has grown fast and handed out especially large sums to far-right groups close to Trump.
The Impact Fund, which was started in 2012 and shares at least two board members with the foundation, has witnessed explosive growth in recent years, with revenues from undisclosed donors hitting $108m in 2022 versus just $7m in 2017, according to tax records.
By contrast, the Bradley Foundation doled out $56.6m in 2022.
The Bradley foundation’s board includes the well-known rightwinger Art Pope, a North Carolina multimillionaire who used to chair its board and is also a director of the Bradley Impact Fund. Pope has deep ties to other conservative bastions such as the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, where he has been a board member too.
The board of the Bradley Foundation also boasts the rightwing lawyer and Trump ally Cleta Mitchell, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute.
Mitchell founded CPI’s self-styled “election integrity network” in 2021 after participating with Trump on his 2 January call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who Trump beseeched to “find” 11,780 votes to help overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state.
Mitchell has been a driving force in mobilizing other Trump-allied election denialist groups to expand poll-watching and other measures to guard against potential voting fraud, while she has continued to promote bogus claims of election fraud in 2020.
Serendipitously, the rightwing Public Interest Legal Foundation that Mitchell chairs received $750,000 from the two Bradley non-profits combined, according to the liberal-leaning Center for Media and Democracy, which tracks money in politics.
Although not as well-known as the sprawling network of conservative groups funded by the oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch, experts say the two Bradley non-profits have become instrumental in funding major political players on the right.
“Through their extensive grant-making, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Bradley Impact Fund are shaping politics and policymaking in ways that will be felt for years to come,” said Beckel.
Other experts who follow influential donors on the right, including the two Bradley non-profits, agree that their hefty donations are supporting major players and groups backing Trump.
“These are substantial investments that are furthering extremists at the forefront of Trump’s agenda,” said Lisa Graves, the executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North.
Speaking about the older Bradley Foundation, Graves said: “It has nearly $1bn in assets. Its board includes the multimillionaire Art Pope, whose personal ambition is to change the political landscape of North Carolina and more to suit his regressive agenda.”
She added: “Mitchell has been playing a significant role in efforts to make it harder for Americans to vote, and harder for Americans to have fair representation through fair maps.”
The Bradley Foundation board boasts other big-name conservative lawyers too, including Paul Clement, a former US solicitor general who has done substantial legal work for pro-gun interests, and Eugene Scalia, a secretary of labor during the Trump administration and the son of the late supreme court justice Antonin Scalia.
In total, the two Bradley non-profits in 2022 poured about $165m into dozens of groups including quite a few Trump-allied thinktanks, legal outfits and other advocacy outfits.
Other rightwing recipients who received checks from both Bradley non-profits include the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which pulled in a total of $1.1m, and the National Center for Public Policy Research, which received just over $1m.
Similarly, the two Bradley non-profits gave a total of $700,000 to Flynn’s America’s Future, almost $530,000 to the Heritage Foundation, and $510,050 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
In the case of Flynn’s America’s Future, the Bradley non-profits were crucial to sustaining its operations in 2022, according to tax records. America’s Future only raised about $1.1m in 2022.
Flynn, who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser and who Trump pardoned in late 2020 after he was convicted of lying to the FBI about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador in 2016, was a key pusher of false claims the 2020 election was rigged. He is now urging a “guard the vote” drive against potential fraud, a ploy Trump has touted too.
The rapid growth of the Bradley Impact Fund, which bills itself as a “donor-advised fund” and keeps donor names secret, underscores how many big conservative check-writers want to hide their identities, say experts.
“Donor-advised funds like the Bradley Impact Fund allow mega-donors to support organizations while keeping their names out of the spotlight,” said Beckel.
The Bradley Impact Fund, he said, gives “wealthy mega-donors additional anonymity and help keep donors’ names out of the limelight, even as these individuals contribute large sums to influence elections and policy debates”.
More broadly, Graves said: “Though the two Bradley non-profits are not as well known as Koch’s non-profit empire or Leonard Leo’s money operation to capture key levers of power, they have become increasingly important to the growth of the Maga ecosystem.”
===
--
April 8, 2024 RWW
David Gilbert @ Wired: Inside the Election Denial Groups Planning to Disrupt November
Groups like True the Vote and Michael Flynn’s America Project want to mobilize thousands of Trump supporters by pushing baseless claims about election fraud—and are rolling out new technology to fast-track their efforts.
REF
:{:{WIRED}:
As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the US are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it.}:
All the evidence states otherwise. But in recent weeks, these groups have held training sessions about how to organize on a hyperlocal level to monitor polling places and drop boxes, challenge voter registrations en masse, and intimidate and harass voters and election officials. And some are preparing to roll out new technology to fast-track all of these efforts: One of the groups claims they’re launching a new platform for checking voter rolls that contains billions of “data elements” on every single US citizen.
These groups could have a major impact on the 2024 election. In addition to disenfranchising voters and putting additional pressure on already overstretched election offices, they could convince more and more people that US elections are fraudulent.
Catherine Engelbrecht and her organization True the Vote have effectively tried to disenfranchise voters for more than a decade by claiming that voter rolls are filled with phony voter registrations. Engelbrecht’s rhetoric was given an unprecedented boost in the wake of 2020, when Trump and other elected officials mainstreamed conspiracies that the elections had been rigged in favor of Democrats. Hundreds of national and local election denial groups were formed, and many of them amassed huge followings on social media platforms like Telegram. As the 2024 presidential election looms, they are ramping up efforts to do it again.
“It could be exponentially worse than what we saw in 2020, but we're going to be awake, we're going to be engaged, we are going to understand the process, and we're going to have options to continue to hold to those truths,” Engelbrecht said during a March webinar titled “Election Integrity Team Building 101.” “We're not going to back down. There's too much to lose.”
The hour-long presentation was delivered from a hotel room in Denver, with Engelbrecht laying out what could sound like a relatively benign plan to monitor elections and check voter rolls. “Keep a soft heart, keep a kind word in your mouth, approach people irrespective of party with love. You will find that things will be much better if that is the approach that is taken,” Engelbrecht said. The session, she said, was overbooked.
Engelbrecht then began speaking about elections being “perilously close to cracking in half,” and her presentation became a highlight reel of election conspiracies, references to crystals, Christian nationalist rhetoric, and militaristic jargon. “If this republic’s to be saved, it's because [of] people like all of you that are on this webinar right now. There are some bad actors out there and we live in particularly chaotic and caustic times,” said Engelbrecht. “If we wait on somebody to do something, we will watch freedom slip away on our watch. That's how close we are.”
“These groups are trying to lay the groundwork to potentially make later claims about the election that very well may be false. But the more chaos that can be caused along the way will give more fodder to that disinformation,” Andrew Garber, an expert at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, tells WIRED. “It's not just bad if there's a mass voter challenge because people might get kicked off the rolls. It's also bad if people then take that challenge and say, ‘See, look at all these ineligible voters,’ when in fact that's not the case.”
:{:{Engelbrecht founded True the Vote in 2010, when she was an activist for the right-wing populist Tea Party movement. After the 2020 election, Engelbrecht and her collaborator Gregg Phillips became central figures in the Stop the Steal movement, and starred in the widely-debunked election conspiracy film *2000 Mules*.}:
They were also arrested for contempt of court after refusing to identify their source behind allegations that the Chinese government had accessed US election data. True the Vote also made wild allegations of widespread ballot stuffing in Georgia during the 2020 vote and a subsequent runoff in 2021. Earlier this year, True the Vote was forced to admit in court that the group had no evidence to back up its claims.}:
In 2022, the group rolled out a slick new software tool known as IV3, based on technology developed by Phillips, that compared names on voter rolls to a database maintained by the US Postal Service, allowing anyone to challenge voter registrations across the country if they spotted a discrepancy. A WIRED investigation, however, revealed that the information used to challenge the registration of hundreds of thousands of people was based on unreliable data.
:{:{Undeterred, True the Vote announced last week that it was relaunching IV3. Phillips claims that the software’s database now has close to “100 billion data elements about every single voter in the United States.” WIRED has not seen proof of this claim. The new IV3 system will soon be available in all 50 states, the organization said.}:
On Thursday, the group held a webinar to train local activists on how to use it. The new system also relies on data from the US Postal Service, but Engelbrecht claimed during the presentation that Phillips and his team had “normalized” the data from all 50 states to ensure the system would not produce inaccurate results. She also said that thousands of people across the country were already registered, and that they had a long waiting list.}:
*Additionally, she said that another software tool developed by Phillips’ team, called Ground Fusion, would be released soon; it is aimed at organizations and PACs looking to identify voting irregularities across larger geographic regions.
Engelbrecht declined to comment, claiming without evidence that WIRED had “written unfairly about True the Vote and IV3 in the past.”
True the Vote is not the only group seeking to leverage technology to supercharge the spread of election conspiracies. A secretive Georgia-based firm called EagleAI NETwork has developed a voter information database to fast-track the deletion of ineligible voters from the system. Voter rights groups have advised against its use, as insignificant errors—such as a missing comma before the suffix “Jr.”—have led to eligible names being removed. Still, at least one county in Georgia has agreed to use EagleAI to review voter challenges and conduct list maintenance activities.
One of EagleAI’s key backers is former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, who in the past two years has become central to the push to spread election conspiracies on a national level through her well-funded Election Integrity Network.
The group has held in-person training seminars in recent years, with session topics including how to protect “Vulnerable Voters from Leftist Activists” and “Monitoring Voting Equipment and Systems.” More recently, the group has made its training sessions available online, and is now once again ramping up its efforts ahead of the 2024 election with an initiative called Soles to the Rolls, aimed at boosting challenges to voter registration.
Mitchell, EagleAI, and the Election Integrity Network did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Another training webinar called “We the People” was also hosted last month by the America Project and its offshoot, Vote Your Vision. Broadcasted online to hundreds of attendees, the webinar featured a lineup of election conspiracists, Republican lawmakers, a guy who wrote a book about fifth-generation warfare, and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
The webinar, the group’s website said, was designed to give people “the secrets to reclaiming our power and reshaping history” by using “state-of-the-art election tools,” including those involving artificial intelligence technology. While the details of exactly what these tools will look like and how they will be used are unclear, the America Project has already scheduled more training sessions in the coming weeks to give supporters more information. The group also did not reply to requests for comment.
The America Project was cofounded by disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO and conspiracist Patrick Byrne, who also funds part of the organization. Both Flynn and Byrne reportedly attended a White House meeting in late 2020 to urge Trump to essentially declare martial law and seize voting machines.
While Flynn didn’t speak during last month’s webinar, he has arguably done more than anyone since 2020 to push the notion that America’s elections are fundamentally fraudulent, appearing at conferences, in podcasts, and on right-wing news shows on a near-daily basis. Trump has also indicated that Flynn will be brought back into his administration should he win.
:{:{These efforts have been given the seal of approval by the Republican National Committee, which was recently restructured by Trump to include election deniers and family members in top positions while cutting minority outreach efforts.}:
One of those election deniers is Christina Bobb, who will be running the “election integrity unit.” A former Trump lawyer and TV presenter on far-right channel One America News, Bobb is a major promoter of the myth that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. The RNC’s election-related priorities, according to an internal memo recently obtained by NPR, include “a broader effort over the coming months to [legally] challenge voter identification and signature verification rules which were put into place for the 2020 election.”}:
During the America Project webinar last month, one of the hosts apologized to listeners for being unable to get Bobb to join the call that day, but promised that she would join a future session—highlighting just how closely these conspiracy-focused groups work with the mainstream GOP apparatus.
“These groups have a playbook nationally that they tend to deploy locally,” says Garber. “Some of these playbooks that have an intended national reach are then deployed through local activists, and it's concerning because it's the voters at the local level who suffer the effects. It's the election officials at the local level trying to keep order at the polls, trying to make sure their voter rolls are up to date, who have to deal with this stuff.”
One of Flynn’s core messages over the past four years has been that “local action equals national impact” —an expression that revolves around a concept called “precinct strategy,” which aims to get people into key positions on local committees in order to push their narratives at the local level. In 2024, that strategy has been primed and polished.
“This concept of precinct strategy was actually endorsed by President Trump in the last election cycle,” Yehuda Miller, a Republican county committee member in New Jersey, said during the America Project seminar. “We want to take the strategy to the next level. We want to get more organized, we want to start organizing across multiple counties in a state, we want to start organizing across multiple states. We have the power to direct our elected officials.”
rww 1 24
Arizona Republican Party elected Gina Swoboda its new chair on Saturday. Swoboda, the director of election day operations for former President Donald Trump in 2020, replaces Jeff DeWit, who resigned last week after being targeted by MAGA Senate candidate Kari Lake.
Swoboda’s bid for state party chair was promoted by Lake and endorsed by Trump, Nick Fuentes ally state Sen. Wendy Rogers, and Arizona-based far-right activist Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA. Lake, who has never accepted her loss in the 2022 governor’s race, called Swoboda’s selection a “massive victory” for her campaign and for Trump’s, the Associated Press reported.
Swoboda runs VoteRef.com, which is part of a network of MAGA movement projects to enable challenges to voters’ eligibility, which American Oversight reported in December “could be used not just to compromise individual privacy, but also to intimidate voters, cause mass cancellations of voting registrations, and inundate local elected officials with burdensome, time-consuming, and inaccurate challenges.” Swoboda’s efforts have been funded by far-right megadonor Richard Uihlein.
Swoboda has collaborated with Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump attorney who took part in the notorious call on which Trump tried to bully Georgia’s secretary of state into “finding” him enough votes to overturn the election; Mitchell now runs a coalition of right-wing groups that are working to enable voter suppression in the name of “election integrity.”
A Pro Publica investigation of Swoboda’s Voter Reference Foundation in 2022 reported:
ProPublica contacted election officials in a dozen of the states where VoteRef has examined voter rolls, and in every case the officials said that the methodology used to identify the discrepancies was flawed, the data incomplete or the math wrong. The officials, a mix of Democrats and Republicans, were in Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin…Election experts say the type of work being done by VoteRef risks leading to further misinformation or being weaponized by people trying to undermine the legitimacy of the past election or give the sense that voter fraud is a more encompassing problem than it’s proven to be. Or it could be used to harass or intimidate valid voters under the guise of challenging their legitimacy.
an 12 23
Former President Donald Trump and his supporters are setting their sights on a relatively unknown and mundane target, but election integrity experts say the results could have disastrous consequences in 2024.
On Friday, Rolling Stone reported that Trumpworld is coming after the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which dozens of states have used to organize voter registration data that was previously kept on paper. ERIC was created by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and has been used by both Democratic and Republican-controlled states without incident since 2012. However, the ex-president has railed against ERIC on his Truth Social page, calling it a "terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up."
Trump has called on Republican secretaries of state to pull out of ERIC, and MAGA-aligned attorney Cleta Mitchell has baselessly asserting that it was created and funded by Democratic billionaire George Soros (a rep for Soros' foundation told CNN it has "never funded" ERIC). Following the far-right's attacks on the system, ERIC has gone from being used by 33 states to just 24 as of December 2023.
According to Rolling Stone, ERIC allows states an easy way to purge voter rolls of deceased or ineligible voters, and offers a secure way for different secretaries of state to confidentially share voter info, like driver's license numbers and the last four digits of a voter's Social Security number "to eliminate any confusion about who a voter is and whether they’re eligible to register."
ERIC co-founder and former executive director David Becker — who resigned this year amid a GOP-led pressure campaign — said the far right's anti-ERIC campaign can lead to voter lists being "significantly less accurate" as more states pull out. He added that the problems that will inevitably arise from states not using ERIC could help fuel false narratives about supposedly stolen elections.
"There will be old records on the voter lists of people who are no longer eligible in the state that will fuel false claims of potential voter fraud. And there will be inaccurate records [of those] who are eligible in the state who moved within the state that they will likely not catch," Becker said. "Faulty voter files create long lines on Election Day, delays in getting mail-in ballots, an increase in provisional ballots, and delays in determining a winner."
“The more problems at the polls, the more lines, the more provisional ballots, the longer it takes to count overall ballots and get an unofficial winner, those all feed into the potential for chaos and even incitement to violence by election losers," he continued.
READ MORE:'Glitch' affects touchscreen voting machines in swing Pennsylvania county: 'Peak of mistrust'
Voting software company EagleAI, which was developed by a healthcare CEO from Alabama, is being fielded as a MAGA alternative to ERIC. However, Georgia director of elections Blake Evans criticized an EagleAI presentation as "confused," and said it could "steer counties towards unlawful list-maintenance activities." Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said the software's pattern of using property tax records to determine voter eligibility was "utterly unreliable" and could result in litigation from voters being falsely removed.
"There’s any number of spouses who do not show up on property–tax records. No one who rents an apartment will show up on property-tax records," Schmidt said.
Click here to read Rolling Stone's full report.
READ MORE:'Thousands of mail ballots not counted': PA gov fixing issue that disenfranchised 17K voters
brendan f shakedn gmal 8 23
former Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell and her network of election conspiracy theorists are secretly backing a new project to help MAGA activists generate mass voter challenges, anew investigation by Documented reveals.
This endeavor hints at how right-wing vigilantes—supported by powerful institutions and millions in dark money—could pose a threat to free and fair elections in 2024.
“Eagle AI” looks to fill the void left by Mitchell and her network’s successful campaign to pressure state officials to cut ties with the bipartisan Electronic Registration Information Center, better known as ERIC.
As NBC News first reported, based on material provided by Documented, Eagle AI draws from public data sources like voter files and newspaper obituaries to build a dashboard for activists to conduct their own “list maintenance” and generate potentially thousands of challenges to voter eligibility with a few clicks.
“While a handful of individuals in Georgia and Texas have taken in recent years to filing mass voter challenges,” NBC reported, “EagleAI could turn that steady stream into a nationwide flood.”
The resulting flood of conspiracy-driven voter challenges, drawn from questionable data, could inundate overworked and under-resourced election offices and lead to eligible voters being purged from the rolls. In many states, challenged voters will have to jump through additional hoops to have their vote counted.
Eagle AI is being deployed through Mitchell’s “Election Integrity Network” (EIN), which was launched by the $45 million Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). Activists affiliated with EIN in states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida are already testing the Eagle AI system, and setting up meetings with election officials to normalize the program and encourage them to accept voter challenges generated by the platform. Platforms will also be rolled out soon in Arizona, Nevada and Texas.
Eagle AI’s funding sources are murky, but a planning document co-authored by Mitchell reveals plans to receive private donations from sources including Donors Trust, known as the “dark money ATM of the right.” A legal firm associated with Mitchell—and housed within CPI—also set up Eagle AI's tax-exempt arm, "Valid Vote," which told the IRS that it plans to raise $2.1 million in advance of the 2024 election.
Mitchell’s participation in the Georgia-based project comes as Fulton County prosecutors bring criminal charges against Trump and 18 co-conspirators for their efforts to block Biden’s win in that state. Mitchell was not indicted, but she did support Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including joining the infamous call when the president urged Georgia’s top election official to “find” 11,780 votes.
Dive deeper into Eagle AI—and view videos, documents, and other material—at Documented’s website.
no lnx an 8 23
Pro-Trump Republicans aiding Georgia company seeking to 'aggressively cancel voter registrations': report
Brandon Gage August 14, 2023
A private company aided by Republican "election integrity activists" is "attempting to sell software to Georgia election officials and residents that would enable them to aggressively cancel voter registrations," Mark Niesse reports in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.
:{:{}:
}:
EagleAI's "software could be used by local governments as well as individuals who have challenged the eligibility of tens of thousands of voters since the 2020 presidential election," Niesse explains. "EagleAI's sales pitch has alarmed voting rights organizations that say it could be abused to attempt to disenfranchise legitimate voters."
Niesse finds that those efforts are compounding on former President Donald Trump's unsuccessful attempt to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 victory in the Peach State. "Since then," Niesse reveals, EagleAI "filed challenges to nearly 100,000 Georgia voters' eligibility, in some cases forcing legitimate voters to defend their right to vote."
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?
Niesse points out that despite Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defending "Georgia's voter lists" as "the cleanest in the nation,'" EagleAI's "presentation alleges the state's voter rolls are bloated with people who have died or moved away."
Raffensperger's spokesman, Mike Hassinger told Niesse that "EagleAI data offers zero additional value to Georgia's existing list maintenance procedures," adding, "We already utilize the most accurate death data through our Department of Public Health and the Social Security death master list. We already check for duplicates."
Moreover, Niesse questions EagleAI's non-partisanship because Chief Executive Officer Rick Richards "frequently speaks during Zoom calls hosted by Cleta Mitchell,an attorney who supported efforts to overturn Trump's loss and participated in the former president's call to Raffensperger asking him to 'find' enough votes to reverse the outcome."
Niesse notes that "the Zoom calls, which bring together members of Mitchell's Election Integrity Network group, also included Jason Frazier, a Republican Party nominee to the Fulton County election board who has challenged the registrations of almost 10,000 people since last year."
READ MORE: Fani Willis’ 'entire career has been preparing her' to prosecute Trump: report
EagleAI "is negotiating with Columbia County's election board and has discussed working with a dozen more Georgia counties, according to emails obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the state's open records law," Niesse writes.
Meanwhile, Niesse continues, "EagleAI says it plans to start its voter registration list efforts in Georgia, then expand to other states, including Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas."
READ MORE: Trump’s 'demographic war' is 'far more dangerous' than 1930s American fascism: report
Niesse's report is at this link (subscription required).
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
Revealed: Fulton County DA to present Trump Georgia election case to grand jury next week ›
GOP Georgia chair: Trump’s lawyers advised me to stand as fake elector ›
'Anticipation is rising': GA GOP officials hurry to rein in prosecutors as possible Trump indictment looms ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Georgia GOP chairman says he was just following orders from ... ›
GOP starts boosting Walker in runoff amid calls to keep Trump away ... ›
Georgia's Kemp veers from Trump, but state GOP not moving on | AP ... ›
https://**documented**.net/investigations/conservative-partnership-institute
Conservative Partnership Institute (“CPI”) is a$45 million “America First” institution boosted with a $1 million donation from former President Trump’s PAC. Led by former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, CPI is creating the MAGA-oriented political infrastructure that the Trump administration lacked.
CPI is recruiting America First staffers and providing in-depth training for Hill offices, as well as creating legal institutions, opposition research firms, think tanks, and other groups helmed by former Trump officials and allies, including Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, andCleta Mitchell. Formed in 2017, CPI's fundraising surged to $45 million in 2021.
The group’s ambitions are sprawling, from amplifying conspiracies around stolen elections and “critical race theory,” to tanking Democratic nominees and filing lawsuits against the Biden administration. CPI’s president, Ed Corrigan, helped lead Trump’s 2016 transition team, and the group is positioned to staff and support far-right Congressional offices and the next MAGA administration.
CPI is located blocks from the U.S. Capitol, and serves as a hub for the far-right "America First "movement. The House Freedom Caucus holds weekly meetings at CPI, and texts obtained by the January 6 committee show lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Sen. Mike Lee referencing meetings at CPI in the tumultuous period following the 2020 election. Nearly two dozen individuals tied to the January 6 attempted coup are connected to CPI, according to Grid's analysis."CPI is helping to build out the vital infrastructure we need to lead the America First movement to new heights."
Nerve Center for the MAGA Movement
CPI’s Washington D.C. headquarters serve as ahub for the far-right conservative movement. According to CPI, in 2021 the “House Freedom Caucus, the Senate Steering Committee, Congressional Chiefs of Staff, Congressional Communicators, Congressional Legislative Directors, and numerous conservative organizations and activists coalesced regularly at [CPI’s headquarters] to plan their methods and means of attack against the Left to save this country.”
Former Republican CongressmanDenver Riggleman described CPI as playing a "coordinating function" for the House Freedom Caucus, and said that it serves as "sort of like a bizarre Freedom Caucus HQ."
CPI
of holding 600 meetings or events in 2021, served as a "strategy center" to oppose President Biden’s vaccine requirements, and hosted **multiple “war rooms**” during Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination. CPI is also expanding, and says that it is “in the process of acquiring multiple properties adjacent to our D.C. headquarters in order to create a culture of collaboration and victory for the movement.”
According to CPI, members like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Andy Biggs, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. Byron Donalds have made the CPI headquarters “their home away from home.”
At least fifteen members of the House and Senate have disclosed paying membership dues to CPI or its "Conservative Partnership Center" using campaign or leadership PAC funds.
Ties to Trump’s 2020 Coup Attempt
CPI and its affiliate groups “employ or assist at least 20 key operatives reportedly involved in Trump’s failed effort to subvert the 2020 election,” according to Grid, including Cleta Mitchell,the veteran lawyer who supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and joined the infamous callwhen the president urged Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find” 11,700 votes; Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff who was in communication with alleged Jan. 6 plotters and at least tolerated Trump's attempted coup; and Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who supported Trump’s desire for DOJ to declare the result fraudulent, and whose home was raided by the FBI in June of 2022.
Texts obtained by the January 6 committee also show Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Sen. Mike Lee referencing meetings at CPI in the tumultuous period after the 2020 election.
Mike Lee to Mark Meadows, Nov. 9 2020:
We had steering executive meeting at CPI tonight, with Sidney Powell as our guest speaker. My purpose in having the meeting was to socialize with Republican senators the fact that POTUS needs to pursue his legal remedies. You have in us a group of ready and loyal advocates who will go to bat for him, but I fear this could prove short-lived unless you hire the right legal team and set them loose immediately.
Marjorie Taylor Greene to Mark Meadows, Dec. 31, 2020:
Good morning Mark, I'm here in DC. We have to get organized for the 6th. I would like to meet with Rudy Giuliani again. We didn't get to speak with him long. Also anyone who can help. We are getting a lot of members on board. And we need to lay out the best case for each state. I'll be over at CPI this afternoon.
CPI hardly shies away from its affiliation with Trump’s failed coup.
Months after the Capitol insurrection, in summer of 2020, CPI hosted a “Hot Gulag Summer” event that served Jan. 6-themed cocktails, including the “Capitol Attaquiri,” “Insurrection on the Beach” and the “Mostly Peaceful Mojito.”
“We’re all going to be sent to the gulag eventually,” the invitation read. “We might as well party and get to know each other before we are all ‘reeducated.’”
"America First" Staffing
CPI boasts of recruiting, recommending, and training Congressional staffers who are committed to advancing an America First agenda. In 2021, CPI claims to have 49 members of Congress and 246 Congressional staffers, and to have 200 Congressional staffing recommendations.
“We gave conservatives on Capitol Hill the right skills, the right people, and the right connections—all for the purpose of making America great again,” CPI described in its annual report. For example, in 2021 CPI held “5-week-long legislative boot camps” taught by Ed Corrigan and Rachel Bovard, where “theyarmedconservative staffers with everytacticthe House and Senate rules gave them: how toforce amendment votes, how to work outside the Establishment- dominated committee process, and how to leverage nominations to wage policy fights:”
“You may have seen that conservatives defeated Biden’s gun-grabbing pick to lead the ATF and stopped a communist- sympathizing economist from becoming comptroller of the currency. That didn’t happen by accident.”
According to CPI, “our trainings have become so respected that conservative congressional offices and grassroots advocacy organizations now come to us when they have job openings to fill. They know that we maintain a databaseof current and prospective congressional staffers who have been through our trainings and are up to the task of putting America first.”
In 2021, CPI purchased a $7.25 million collection of waterfront farms on Maryland's Eastern Shore to hold Congressional staff retreats and trainings. CPI has since held several all-expenses-paid retreats at the property for Congressional staff. Staffers who attend retreats at the CPI-owned property only disclose receiving an estimated $99/night gift of lodging, which helps obscure reveal the actual benefit received.
CPI-Launched Projects, Many Led by former Trump Officials
In 2021, CPI launched eight new projects, as well as entities to provide legal compliance and administrative support for those groups:
Election Integrity Network:Cleta Mitchell, the veteran lawyer who supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, joined CPI and launched the Election Integrity Network (EIN) in early 2021, after resigning as a partner with the international law firm Foley and Lardner. Documented obtained leaked audio describing how CPI’s EIN is working with groups like Tea Party Patriots to create “permanent election integrity coalitions in eight target states,” and hosted Trump coup plotter John Eastman at an October 2022 event.
Center for Renewing America: Trump Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russ Vought leads the culture war-oriented Center for Renewing America (CRA). “CRA’s strategy is to initiate planned confrontations on major national cultural issues, win those confrontations, and let the resulting political momentum fuel legislative activity at the federal, state, and local levels,” CPI says. CRA has created anti-CRT model legislation, opposed making women eligible for the draft, and opposed Afghan refugee migration.Jeffrey Clark, who Trump wanted to install as Attorney General after the 2020 election and who supported Trump’s desire for the Justice Department to declare the results fraudulent, joined CRA as Senior Fellow in June 2022, shortly beforefederal authorities searched Clark's home as part of the criminal inquiry into Trump's attempted coup. CRA senior fellows also include former Trump advisor Kash Patel, who appeared before a grand jury in the Mar al Lago documents case.
America First Legal Foundation: Trump’s hardline immigration advisor Stephen Millerco-created the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) with Mark Meadows, which claims to give “the 234 new federal judges appointed by Donald Trump the chance to finally hold Washington accountable to the rule of law.” According to the*Washington Post, the group "has weaponized the grievance politics embodied by Trump’s 'Make America Great Again' movement through dozens of federal lawsuits, challenging efforts to remedy racial disparities, support LGBTQ students and expand the pool of early voters." In the final weeks of the 2022 elections, AFL spent $4 million on inflammatory anti-transgender radio ads. Casino magnate Steve Wynn, who resigned as RNC finance chair amid allegations of sexual misconduct in 2018, is among AFL's donors, according to the *Post*.*
American Accountability Foundation: Tom Jones, Ted Cruz’s 2016 oppo research director, leads the group described as the “Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees” by the *New Yorker*. AAF has taken credit for knocking out President Biden's Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms nominee David Chipman, comptroller nominee Saule Omarova, and Federal Reserve nominee Sarah Bloom Raskin.
American Cornerstone Institute: former Trump cabinet member Ben Carson is founder and chair of American Cornerstone Institute (ACI), where Carsonhosts a podcast and creates YouTube videos, and which created the anti-woke "Little Patriots" platform "to teach children about our founding principles."
American Moment: “American Moment’s mission is to identify, educate, and credential young Americans who will implement public policy that supports strong families, a sovereign nation, and prosperity for all,” according to CPI's annual report. In 2021, American Moment claims to have placed ten fellows at aligned organizations and congressional offices and, according to CPI, paid them “a living wage of $3,000 a month.” CPI plans to quadruple the program to 40 fellows in 2022.
State Freedom Caucus Network: In late 2021, CPI launched the "State Freedom Caucus Network" to replicate the far-right Congressional House Freedom Caucus in statehouses. CPI plans to create state freedom caucuses in every state legislature, according to its annual report, with caucuses already assembled in states including Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Illinois, Nevada, South Dakota, and South Carolina. Each state caucus will have an executive director, and CPI boasts that "the State Freedom Caucus Network will identify, place, and pay for legislative staffers year-round," and also create a PAC to "defend current and future state freedom caucus members facing tough reelections." Following the 2022 midterm elections in Arizona, for example, that state's freedom caucus promoted false claims of voter fraud andissued a statement calling Maricopa County election officials "incompetent, alleged criminals" who should "resign in shame."
CPI also helped launch two organizations to support these projects. Compass Professional Services, which is housed within CPI, provides payroll and administrative services to these entities. Compass Legal Services, also located at CPI headquarters, provides legal, campaign finance, and tax compliance services; according to campaign finance records, CPI members like Marjorie Taylor Greene also pay Compass Legal for legal compliance services, as does Trump's Save America PAC.
CPI Pushing Boundaries of Tax-Exempt Charitable Status
As a 501(c)(3) charity, CPI is exempt from taxation, and its donors get a lucrative tax deduction. But in exchange for those tax benefits, CPI is prohibited from supporting candidates or engaging in partisan political activity.
However, as NPR has reported, CPI is putting its tax-exempt status at risk by closely coordinating its activities with Republican political organizations and selectively offering its facilities and services to Republican candidates. In November 2022, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse sent a letter to CPI inquiring into whether CPI has violated its tax-exempt charitable status.
The NPR report and Sen. Whitehouse's letter detailed several CPI activities that may violate tax law. For example, in the 2022 election cycle, CPI's Election Integrity Network worked closely with the Republican National Committee (RNC) as it worked to recruit and train poll workers and watchers in key swing states, as reported by POLITICO based on audio obtained by Documented. RNC officials have been speakers at several CPI summits, and RNC state election integrity directors are taking part in state-wide election integrity efforts spearheaded by CPI. A 501(c)(3) organization may provide an impermissible private benefit to a political party if it provides programs to recruit and train poll watchers and workers in a partisan manner.
In addition to working closely with the RNC on training and recruiting election observers and poll workers, CPI has hosted political candidates at its events. For example, Governor Ron DeSantis gave the keynote address at CPI’s Florida summit in March of 2022, which amounted to a campaign speech where DeSantis urged people to vote in the election, and stressed that “We need everybody to come out and really, really have a huge, huge November in the state of Florida.”
A 501(c)(3) organization engages in prohibited political campaign intervention by inviting just one candidate to speak at its event, and where that candidate urged support on election day. [audio]
moreover, since late 2020, dozens of GOP candidates have used campaign funds to rent CPI’s facility and services, including for “campaign events” and "fundraising event fees," according to FEC records. Seventeen Congressional candidates and four senatorsreported $4,000 payments to CPI or CPC from their campaign committees or leadership PACs, with the majority of those disbursements described as “membership” payments or dues.
A 501(c)(3) charity engages in prohibited political campaign intervention by selectively offering its facilities to political candidates or committees. There is no record of Democratic candidates renting CPI facilities, and CPI's facilities do not appear available to the general public.
CPI's Fundraising
Since forming in 2017, CPI's fundraising has increased dramatically—most recently, jumping from $7.3 million in 2020 to $45 million in 2021, according to CPI's 2021 tax filing. (CPI's 2021 Annual Report, released in early 2022, reported $19.7 million in revenue plus $25 million in "Capital Fund Revenue").
Trump's Save America PAC gave $1 million to CPI in July 2021. CPI also held a fundraiser at Mar al Lago in April 2021, with former President Trump as the keynote speaker.
As a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit, CPI does not publicly disclose its donors.
However, an analysis by Grid identified more than 40 foundations, charities and other organizations that have funded CPI, including $1.25 million from GOP megadonor RichardUihlein’s foundation in 2020, $500,000 from the late gaming machine mogul Stanley E. Fulton’s private foundation, and $200,000 from the Chicago Community Trust.
Donors Trust, the “dark money” funding hub, donated a total of $1.3 million to CPI in 2021, with $200,000 earmarked for American Moment and $10,000 in support ofCleta Mitchell's Election Integrity Network.
CPI has also identified some financial supporters in its 2021 annual report.
David and Brenda Frecka: CPI thanked the pair for their financial support in its 2021 annual report, and named a "David and Brenda Frecka Boardroom" at CPC. In 2021, David Frecka gave $1M to Jim Jordan's House Freedom Action, and Brenda Frecka gave $1.15M to Debbi Meadows's Right on Women PAC
Mike Rydin: According to CPI’s annual report, Ryden “made a generous gift” so that CPI could purchase a townhouse next door to its headquarters “for additional meeting and event space as well as space to host out-of-town guests.” The property sold for $1.5M in 2020.
Dr. William Amos Jr.: The son of the AFLAC founder “has generously supported the Conservative Partnership Institute. For his incredible contributions to CPI’s growth and mission, in 2021, CPI honored Dr. Amos with CPI’s Lifetime Achievement Award.”
Foster Friess "supported many groups in the movement, including CPI. Foster will always be an important part of the CPI story. With love and purpose, Lynn carries on her late husband’s legacy of helping those in need."
Doug and Charlotte Waikart "made the ultimate commitment to sending American values into the future by supporting CPI in their estate plans."
ref grid
last summer, while most of official Washington was still reeling from the historic assault on the Capitol, a clubhouse for Trump White House exiles hosted a bash that all but toasted the insurrectionists and plotters responsible.
“Hot Gulag Summer,” held at the nondescript Capitol Hill town house leased by the Conservative Partnership Institute, advertised Jan. 6, 2021-themed cocktails, including the “Capitol Attaquiri,” “Insurrection on the Beach” and the “Mostly Peaceful Mojito.”
“We’re all going to be sent to the gulag eventually,” the invitation read. “We might as well party and get to know each other before we are all ‘reeducated.’”
CPI raised $20 million last year alone, and its network of nearly a dozen affiliate groups, several headed by ex-Trump aides, likely raised more. Donald Trump himself has endorsed the group’s work, boosted its fundraising and even donated $1 million to the group from his PAC in 2021.
“It’s striking how many people who played these key roles in efforts to overturn the election are now involved with CPI,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance legal expert and deputy executive director of the watchdog group Documented. His group has examined at least 11 organizations claiming CPI’s address, 300 Independence Ave., as their home.
A soapbox for the far right
CPI is structured in part to act as a 21st century megaphone for pro-Trump messaging, including media perpetuating false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, furthering MAGA-friendly culture war battles and pushing back against efforts to hold Trumpworld figures accountable.
Its tools reflect a growing right-wing communications strategy, which largely avoids mainstream media in favor of direct-to-supporter platforms like podcasts and social media, or engagements with MAGA-friendly outlets.
The offices at 300 Independence boast an in-house podcasting studio, a television studio and a host of employees with large Twitter followings. Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert is a “frequent visitor” to CPI’s television studio, according to CPI’s annual report, and she records her podcast, “Bullet Points,” at CPI, as do Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona (“What’s the Biggs Idea?”) and Matt Gaetz of Florida (“Firebrand”), as well as several other right-wing figures.
CPI also opens its facilities to right-wing outlets who help promote Trump-friendly messaging. The Epoch Times, a far-right media company affiliated with the anti-Chinese Communist Party Falun Gong religious movement, films two shows in the building, according to CPI. Right-wing outlet Newsmax filmed a documentary about Jan. 6 at CPI’s television studio.
“A Rorschach test for your sanity”
“This is a Rorschach test for your sanity,” Miller went on. “If you heard this story, and you thought, ‘Man, I believe every word about this and I’m going to go online and say something about it energetically,’ something is wrong with you. Something is wrong with you if you’re that gullible.”
Later that evening, former Trump Pentagon official Kash Patel, now with CPI’s Center for Renewing America, went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to join the attacks on Hutchinson. The 26-year-old former Meadows aide, Patel said, was a “junior staffer who is completely, I believe, lying to the Jan. 6 committee for [her] own self-gain.”
OnHannity’s show the day after Hutchinson’s testimony,Freedom Caucus co-founder Rep. Jim Jordanof Ohio laid into the committee: “This is not an unbiased finder of fact. These are nine people as you said, Sean, nine people who voted to impeach President Trump, nine people who are out to get President Trump and don’t want him to run. … All we have got from them is lie after lie after lie.”
Miller, Patel and Jordan declined to respond to Grid’s requests for comment.
Where the money comes from
CPI is thriving. In less than five years, it has grown from a newcomer to a $19.7 million organization. Its network likely has raised much more, because separate organizations that are affiliated with CPI raise funds independently of their parent organization.
The group’s success has irked some Republican operatives who feel CPI is acting as a job provider for otherwise out-of-work ex-Trump aides.
“They’re frauds,” said one longtime Republican strategist who has worked for major campaigns and spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person’s job could be at risk for speaking negatively. “They claim to be fiscal conservatives, but they’ve made a living off of generating conservative outrage in order to raise money for themselves.”
Other Republican luminaries who have donated to CPI include the late GOP megadonor Foster Friess, who is known for helping fund the Koch donor network. The late gaming machine mogul Stanley E. Fulton’s private foundation gave $500,000 to CPI, according to its records. The Chicago Community Trust reported $200,000 in contributions to the group.
“They’ve got a lot of money, and they’re willing to use that money in any way to advance their goals,” said Norm Ornstein, election expert and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “And their goals are radical goals about voter suppression, overturning election results if they don’t like them and trying to keep any Democrat who’s in office from governing.”
A who’s who of Jan. 6
Several of the figures of greatest interest to the Jan. 6 committee are now employed by CPI or its subsidiary groups, including:
Mark Meadows: Meadows, Trump’s fourth chief of staff, was allegedly a key enabler of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He promoted false fraud claims and was a point of contact for election-denying members of Congress, Giuliani and other key operatives. Meadows participated in pivotal meetings and conversations with state and federal officials, according to reports and the Jan. 6 committee. Meadows joined CPI as senior partner just three weeks after Jan. 6.
Cleta Mitchell: Mitchell was a legal adviser to Trump’s campaign. She was on the infamous call between Trump and Georgia election officials, which cost her a job as a partner at the Foley and Lardner law firm. The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Mitchell and deposed her. Mitchell is a senior legal fellow at CPI and runs the CPI-backed Election Integrity Network, which holds “election integrity summits” to train partisan volunteers who want to get involved in election administration. Mitchell records her election-themed podcast, “Who’s Counting?” at CPI.
Jeffrey Clark: A former Department of Justice environmental lawyer, Clark was Trump’s pick for attorney general when William Barr declined to pursue vote fraud claims. Clark allegedly circulated a letter encouraging state officials in Georgia to decertify their election results. Federal agents raided his home on June 23, the same day a committee hearing focused on him. Clark was recently hired by the CPI-founded group, the Center for Renewing America.
Kashyap “Kash” Patel: The former Department of Defense chief of staff was allegedly in contact with Meadows on Jan. 6, and the Jan. 6 committee believed he had “important insight and information” into the Pentagon and White House preparations for and response to the Capitol riot. Patel joined the Center for Renewing America as senior fellow for national security and intelligence in September 2021. Patel also records his Epoch Times TV show, “Kash’s Corner,” at the CPI studio.
Stephen Miller: Trump’s former senior adviser for policy and speechwriter has been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee for his involvement in the day’s events. He may have prepared some of Trump’s remarks at the Stop the Steal event before the riot. He is identified as a founder of America First Legal, a nonprofit legal organization with Meadows and former counsel Gene Hamilton, which is associated with CPI. Miller did not respond to a request for comment from Grid.
Several of these figures work for CPI affiliates, which report operating from the same building as CPI and get support from the organization but have distinct names and legal identities, and at times list addresses other than CPI’s Independence Avenue headquarters. The website for Miller’s America First Legal, for instance, lists the group’s address as a nearby UPS store.
“We try to keep out — we don’t try to take credit,”DeMintsaid earlier this year to supporters, according to audio reviewed by Grid. “We try to give other people the credit, because that’s how you are going to build the movement and build trust.”
“We’re honored our Trump White House colleagues like Kash Patel and Jeff Clark are on our teamto punch back against the Deep State,” Semmel said. “We only hire fighters at Renewing America.”
CPI and several of its other affiliate groups, like Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, did not respond to interview requests or requests for comment for this story.
Freedom Caucus
CPI has forged close ties to the Freedom Caucus, the far-right group of Republican House lawmakers co-founded by Meadows that was deeply involved in the events leading up to Jan. 6, according to reports and sworn testimony.
Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania allegedly connected Trump with little-known DOJ lawyer Clark and participated in planning meetings with Trump prior to Jan. 6;
Founding Freedom Caucus member and former chair Rep. Jim Jordan was being contacted by Meadows from the White House on Jan. 6, according to testimony;
Former caucus chair Rep. Andy Biggs allegedly helped organize the rally that segued into the storming of the Capitol, and pressured Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker, to decertify electors;
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a close associate of the Freedom Caucus, but not an official member, has been one of the former president’s most vocal supporters and has spread conspiracy theories about the “feds” being behind the Capitol riot. According to testimony, Gaetz was one of several members of Congress who requested broad pardons from Trump. Gaetz was a speaker at CPI’s 2022 leadership conference and records his podcast at CPI’s studios;
Jan. 6 committee testimony revealed that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene asked Trump for a pardon, but she denies this. She faced a lawsuit in her home state of Georgia where she was forced to testify on her involvement in the effort to overturn the election. She often said she couldn’t recall key moments and meetings. In its 2021 annual report, CPI listed Greene as a “Hero of 2021,” and she spoke at the organization’s 2022 leadership conference.
Neither Perry, Jordan, Biggs, Gaetz nor Greene responded to requests for comment for this story.
A MAGA institution?
Rather than tarnish the reputation of the burgeoning think tank, having allies like Meadows and Greene have helped CPI burnish its identity, Washington Republicans said.
The group’s focus at the moment may be on deflecting attention from Jan. 6, but its gaze is facing forward, at future elections — and future MAGA administrations.
“Everything we love and care about in this country goes down the drain if the election system continues the way it is,” DeMint told attendees at an event this spring, according to a recording reviewed by Grid.
DeMint warned the crowd they would be unfairly painted by liberals and the media: “What we’re doing today is what the left says is the ‘Big Lie,’” he said. “You’re involved with the ‘Big Lie.’”
“It’s aiming to be more than just a place where former Trump officials can cool their heels until the next administration,” said Fischer, of Documented. “It appears to be taking some pretty serious steps to try to establish itself as an institution in Washington D.C. and create that political infrastructure to support the America First movement.”
https://www.alternet.org/terrified-of-gen-z-voting/
no lnx twt
republican attorney, Cleta Mitchell, urged fellow GOP members to join together in an effort to "limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters," The Washington Post reports.
:{
}:
Mitchell encouraged a room of conservatives to unify under enforcing these restrictive voting measures in a presentation titled "A Level Playing Field for 2024," during a recent Republican National Committee donor meeting in Nashville.
Executive Director of America Family Voices, Lauren Widsor, tweeted, "EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Trump coup attorney Cleta Mitchell wants to 'combat' voting on college campuses, citing North Carolina and Wisconsin, and says that when Republicans win the state Senate in Virginia, they can eliminate 45 days of early voting and same day voter registration."
READ MORE: These GOP-sponsored bills would 'restrict voting' by imposing harsh 'criminal penalties': report
According to The Washington Post, which obtained audio from the attorney's presentation, the lawyer's report "focused on campus voting in five states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin — all of which are home to enormous public universities with large in-state student populations."
In the audio, Mitchell can be heard asking the audience, "What are these college campus locations? What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed."
The MAGA lawyer added, "The Left has manipulated the electoral systems to favor one side … theirs. Our constitutional republic's survival is at stake."
Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, who The Post reports "has sued Republicans over their efforts to tighten student and youth voting laws," argued, "Mitchell's efforts appear aimed at making it harder for young people, who tend to vote Democratic, to cast their ballots."
READ MORE: Georgia GOP admits its voting restrictions 'backfired' and helped Dems win Senate runoff
Elias told The Post, "Imagine if in every place in this presentation where she references campuses, she talked about African Americans...Or every place she says students, she instead talked about Latinos. There is a subtle but real bigotry that goes on when people target young voters because of their age."
The Post reports:
Mitchell told her RNC audience that her organization, the Election Integrity Network, 'is NOT about winning campaigns,' according to the text of the presentation. But the slides gave little other rationale for why campus or mail voting should be curtailed. At another point in the presentation, she said the nation's electoral systems must be saved 'for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.'
Mitchell became known for supporting former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election by joining "the ["perfect?] call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 when Trump asked Raffensperger to 'find' enough votes to overturn the result."
Social media users shared their concerns regarding Mitchell's speech.
READ MORE: The Republican voter suppression nightmare
MeidasTouch: "The Republican Party is terrified of Gen-Z. And they should be."
Gavin Newsom: "The @GOP don't even try to hide their voter suppression goals."
clinton williams: "So the GOP don't want early voting, absentee voting and now they don’t want college kids to vote…. Soooo, they are actually afraid of ppl voting.. I wonder why?"
Markos Moulitsas: "Republicans hate democracy"
@TheSGTJoker: "The @GOP plan to engage voters under 65yo is to block them from voting."
Rex Chapman: "They're terrified of young voters."
@DempseyTwo: "Nothing quite says Election Integrity like doing everything you can to disenfranchise those who would vote. Also, listen for the slight, yet still perceptible, disdain she has in her voice for young voters in a recent Supreme Court race in Wisconsin."
READ MORE: 'We can do better': Raphael Warnock schools Brad Raffensperger on voter suppression
Jamie Lockhart: "Quite the admission that the Republican Party is out of touch with voters and needs to restrict access to the ballot to win elections and advance their extreme agenda."
Stu: "This is unbelievably corrupt GOP recognizes it isn't viable in the future as it's structured unless it essentially cheats"
@SpaceForceCad: "I hope #GenZ is paying attention. #MAGA does not want you voting. They know their days are numbered."
Watch the video below or at this link.
READ MORE: Republicans are bleeding voters who helped Trump break the 'blue wall' in 2016: elections expert
The Washington Post's full report is available at this link (subscription required).
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
'A good deal for America': Robert Reich offers Dems a way to undermine GOP power during House speaker war ›
Probe finds far-right Tennessee Republican 'economist' major got a 'C' in his one college econ class ›
'Sour grapes': Brian Kemp urges RNC to move on from 'unproven claims of election fraud' ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on ... ›
The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education ›
A Texas Republican says banning college polling places is about ... ›
gmail 4 23
three of the most prominent rightwing groups which spread election denial lies and advocate for restrictions on voting rights in the US
have joined forces in a secret attempt to woo top election officials in Republican-controlled states.
Led by the Washington-based conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, the groups have created an incubator of policies that would restrict access to the ballot box and amplify false claims that fraud is rampant in American elections. The unstated yet implicit goal is to dampen Democratic turnout and help Republican candidates to victory.
Details of the two-day “secretaries of state conference” held in Washington in February were obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian.
Officials from 13 Republican-controlled states, including 10 top election administrators, participated in the event. Attendees discussed controversial “election integrity” ideas of the sort weaponized by Donald Trump.
Among the participants were nine secretaries of state and Virginia’s election commissioner, all of whom preside over both statewide and federal elections in their states including next year’s presidential contest. A list of attendees namechecks the chief election officials of Indiana, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
Documented also obtained the conference agenda which lists a number of Trump associates among the speakers. They include Ken Cuccinelli who, as acting deputy secretary for homeland security, played a key role in setting elections policy for the Trump administration.
Cuccinelli now runs the Election Transparency Initiative which is fighting Democratic efforts in Congress to shore up voting rights, and has been active in pushing state-level vote restriction measures.
 |
Heritage Foundation Secretaries of State Conference Agenda, obtained by Documented.
The keynote speech was given by Ken Blackwell,former secretary of state in Ohio. He was an early adopter of Trump’s lie about rigged elections, championing the idea in the 2016 presidential race which Trump won.
Blackwell now chairs the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute,a rightwing thinktank led by former Trump officials. The center has been touting election-related model legislation.
Heritage was careful to organize the conference amid tight secrecy. Among the records obtained by Documented is an email from Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer at the foundation who leads their election work.
Responding to a query about the event from a Texas official, Von Spakovsky said: “There is no livestream. This is not a public event. It is a private, confidential meeting of the secretaries. I would rather you not send out a press release about it.”
 |
Email to Texas Senator Paul Bettencourt's staff from Hans von Spakovsky, obtained by Documented
Von Spakovsky has long been at the forefront of efforts to undermine US elections by claiming falsely that fraud is endemic. He helped spearhead the attack on voting by mail during the pandemic, holding private briefings with Republican state election officials – a drive that became a core part of Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Heritage and its political arm, Heritage Action for America, have spent tens of millions of dollars promoting their own model bills that impose strict restrictions on voting. They have targeted the investment on key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan that could hold the balance of power in the 2024 presidential race.
Heritage began hosting annual gatherings of Republican secretaries of state at the start of the Trump presidency in 2017. February’s in-person conference was the first to be sponsored by three rightwing powerhouses of election denial and voter suppression – Heritage, together with the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), and the Honest Elections Project (HEP).
Pilf is a conservative legal group that sues election officials to force them to purge voter rolls, a process that has affected eligible US voters. The group is led by J Christian Adams, a former justice department lawyer who tried to use the Voting Rights Act to claim voting discrimination against white people.
Trump’s former lawyer Cleta Mitchell also sits on the Pilf board.
HEP is a conservative dark-money group closely tied to the Republican operative Leonard Leo who was instrumental in engineering the current conservative supermajority on the US supreme court. Reporting by ProPublica and the New York Times last year revealed that Leo has received control of a staggering $1.6bn to advance rightwing causes.
Concern about the potential of top election officials to subvert democracy intensified during the 2022 midterm elections when a number of individuals committed to Trump’s stolen election lie also ran for office. They formed the “America First Secretary of State Coalition” which became a conduit of far-right conspiracy theories linked to QAnon.
Most of those candidates failed in their bid to take over the reins of election administration in their states. But the Heritage conference suggests that the desire to deploy Republican secretaries of state as channels of voter suppression and election misinformation remains very much alive.
Though chief election officials are tasked with ensuring that ballots are fair and impartial, the Heritage conference was attended only by Republican secretaries of state.
The Guardian asked Heritage to explain why its conference was held in secret and with only Republican attendees. The group did not answer those questions.
Von Spakovsky said that the event was an “educational summit intended to provide information on current issues in elections and ensure that our election process protects the right to vote for American citizens by making it easy to vote and hard to cheat”.
He disputed the argument that security measures at the ballot box such as voter ID suppressed turnout. “The claim that secure elections somehow promote greater restrictions is outrageous and has been clearly disproven,” he said.
Von Spakovsky also pointed to Heritage’s election fraud database, which he said sampled “proven instances of election fraud from across the country”. The database records 1,422 “proven instances of voter fraud” stretching back to 1982 – a 41-year period during which billions of votes have been cast in the US.
Several of the participants at the conference have election denial and voter suppression track records. They include Florida’s secretary of state, Cord Byrd,who, soon after beingappointed by Governor Ron DeSantis last spring, refused to say whether Joe Biden had wonthe 2020 presidential election.
Byrd runs Florida’s “election integrity unit” that was set up by DeSantis last year to investigate election crimes, even though there is scant evidence of substantial voter fraud. More than a dozen citizens accused of illegally voting have been arrested at gunpointunder DeSantis’s crackdown on supposed voter fraud.
Another attendee – Jay Ashcroft, secretary of state of Missouri – has been a leading proponent of that state’s new restrictive voting law. His office has been named in numerous lawsuits in the last year for imposing extreme constraints on voter registration, including a recent lawsuit accusing Ashcroft of illegally blocking a ballot measure.
Tennessee’s secretary of state, Tre Hargett, another listed participant, has been accused by Democratic leaders in Tennessee of purging thousands of voters from the official rolls.
Panel discussions laid out in the agenda were held on several of the core talking points of the current Republican party. The opening discussion, moderated by Von Spakovsky, was on “Auditing Expertise”.
The main speaker was Paul Bettencourt, a state senator in Texas who has sponsored several bills making it harder to vote including a measure that would deploy armed “election marshals” to oversee polling stations.
Before the conference-goers attended a cocktail reception and dinner held at an upscale restaurant in downtown Washington, day one ended with a session entitled: “Realistic Eric Fixes and Reforms”. Eric – the Electronic Registration Information Center – is a non-profit group run collectively by 28 states which is used to finesse the accuracy of state voter rolls.
In recent months it has become the target of rightwing conspiracy theories fueled by Trump who claimed falsely that it was rigged to benefit Democrats.
Ashcroft, the Missouri secretary of state, was one of the speakers in that session. Earlier this month he announced that he was pulling Missouri out of Eric, making it one of the first Republican-controlled states to quit the organization along with Alabama, Florida and West Virginia.
| A guest post by |
Ed Pilkington is chief reporter of the Guardian in the US |
j6 ch 2
...2.2 The Plan Emerges
More than a month before the Presidential election, the media reported that the Trump Campaign was already developing a fallback plan that would focus on overturning certain election results at the State level. An article published on September 23, 2020, in The Atlantic explained, “[a]ccording to sources in the Republican Party at the State and national levels, the Trump Campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground States where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” 15 Ominously, the same reporting predicted, almost exactly, what would later come to pass: “With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask State legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly.” 16
Numerous senior Trump Campaign advisors—including Campaign Manager William Stepien, Deputy Campaign Manager and Senior Counsel Justin Clark, and President Trump’s lead attorney Rudolph Giuliani—all told the Select Committee that there was, indeed, a State-focused “strategy” or “track” to challenge the outcome of the election, which included pressing State legislators to challenge results in key States and to appoint new electoral college electors.17
“You know, in the days after election day, later in that first week, bleeding into the second, as our numbers and data looked bleaker, internally we knew that,” Stepien told the Select Committee.18 “As the AP [Associated Press] called the race, I think some surrounding the President were looking for different avenues to pursue.” That’s when Stepien remembered the concept first coming up.19
Those around President Trump were pushing this idea, and pushing it hard.
Just two days after the election, President Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., forwarded to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows a suggestion that “State Assemblies can step in and vote to put forward the electoral slate[,] Republicans control Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, etc. we get Trump electors” and so “we either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January . . .” 20 Chief of Staff Meadows responded: “Working on this for pa, ga and nc already.” 21
Within one week after the election, Meadows had also sent or received several other similar messages:
“The state legislature can take over the electoral process”—Mark Meadows’s text to Georgia State Senator Marty Harbin.22
“Agreed”—Mark Meadows’s text to a different sender, who suggested that the Trump Administration “should get that out there” if they were “seriously considering the state legislature strategy.” 23
“I will tell him”—Mark Meadows’s text to a sender who suggested President Trump “[s]tart building momentum for the state legislatures.” 24
“I love it”—Mark Meadows’s text to Representative Andy Biggs, who relayed what he acknowledged as a “highly controversial” idea to have “Republican legislature’s (sic)” “appoint a look doors (sic) [electors].” 25
“. . . Why can’t the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors… I wonder if POTUS knows this . . .”—former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to Mark Meadows.26
Another White House official exploring such a plan less than a week after the election was Vince Haley, Deputy Assistant to the President for Policy, Strategy and Speechwriting. He suggested:
“. . . Imagine if every red state legislature slated zero electors. It would reveal that we are a red country. To do this we would have to jack this to the nth degree as a battle of tribes . . . .” 27
Haley pushed this strategy in several texts and emails, including to Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Personnel Johnny McEntee,28 an individual Haley characterized as “a very trusted lieutenant” for President Trump, “a direct conveyor to Boss with ideas,” and “[a]t his side almost all the time.” 29
For Haley, however, purported election fraud was a way to justify President Trump-friendly legislatures changing the outcome of the election, but there were other reasons for doing so, too. Election fraud was “only one rationale for slating Trump electors,” Haley told McEntee, and “[w]e should baldly assert” that State legislators “have the constitutional right to substitute their judgment for a certified majority of their constituents” if that prevents socialism.30
Haley added, “[i]ndependent of the fraud—or really along with that argument—Harrisburg [Pennsylvania], Madison [Wisconsin], and Lansing [Michigan] do not have to sit idly by and submit themselves to rule by Beijing and Paris,” proposing that radio hosts “rally the grassroots to apply pressure to the weak kneed legislators in those states . . .” 31
McEntee replied “Yes!” and then: “Let’s find the contact info for all these people now.” 32 Hours later, Haley sent him names and—in most cases—cell phone numbers for top GOP legislators in six States, suggesting “. . . for POTUS to invite them down for a WH meeting . . .” 33 The President would later call several named in that message, including Rusty Bowers and Karen Fann in Arizona; Lee Chatfield and Mike Shirkey in Michigan; and Jake Corman in Pennsylvania.34
Others weighed in with the President about a State-focused plan, too. Some were already looking ahead to January 6th.
On November 8th, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich met President Trumpat the White House.35 Two days later, he sent a follow-up note to the President’s executive assistant titled “please give to POTUS[,] newt.” 36 It suggested that “[t]he only way Trump loses is rigged system” and added that President Trump could encourage “GOP legislatures elect not to send in electors,” forcing a House vote by State delegations on January 6th that Gingrich expected President Trump would win.37 Meadows replied: “Thanks Speaker.” 38
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy had President Trump’s ear and reportedly spoke with him by phone at least four times before December.39 He forwarded a memo to other close advisors of the President recommending that the Trump team persuade one or more Republican-led chambers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and even Minnesota to “pick a separate competitive State slate of Electors,” which the memo predicted might turn January 6th into “a cat-fight in Congress wherein VP Pence is Presiding.” 40
Attorney and conservative activist Cleta Mitchell was recruited by Mark Meadowsimmediately after the election to assist the Trump Campaign’s legal work.41 By November 5th, she emailed Dr. John Eastman of Chapman University,42 who would later play an outsized role pushing a theory about what Vice President Pence could or couldn’t do during the January 6th joint session of Congress that is detailed in Chapter 5 of this Report. In her email, Mitchell asked Eastman to write a memo justifying an idea that State legislators “reclaim” the power to pick electors and asked, rhetorically, “Am I crazy?” 43 Dr. Eastman wrote the memo, entitled “The Constitutional Authority of State Legislatures to Choose Electors,” and sent it along for sharing “widely.” 44
j6 report ch 3
As discussed further in Chapter 5, that email contained Eastman’s 2-page memo proposing a strategy for January 6th based on the incorrect legal theory that Vice President Pence could assert some authority as President of the Senate to prevent or delay the election of former Vice President Biden during the joint session. Eastman’s memo relied on the fake votes, which the memo featured in the very first line: “7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors.” 120 When Eastman submitted his memo to Epshteyn, he also copied Chesebro, who had edited the memo and called it “[r]eally awesome.” 121
By that point, Chesebro and Eastman were coordinating their arguments about the fake-elector votes and how they should be used. On January 1, 2021, Chesebro sent an email to Eastman and Epshteyn that recommended that Vice President Pence derail the joint session of Congress. In it, he raised the idea of Vice President Pence declaring “that there are two competing slates of electoral votes” in several States, and taking the position that only he, or possibly Congress, could “resolve any disputes concerning them.” 122
Two days later, Eastman completed his second major memo advising President Trump and his team on strategies for January 6th, again arguing that there were “dual slates of electors from 7 states,” and calling for Vice President Pence to assert power to act “[a]s the ultimate arbiter” to take steps that could overturn the election, either by sending the election back to State legislatures to reassess or by rejecting Biden’s certified electoral votes from States in which there were also fake Trump electors.123
By early January, most of the fake elector votes had arrived in Washington, except those from Michigan and Wisconsin.124 Undeterred, the Trump team arranged to fly them to Washington and hand deliver them to Congress for the Vice President himself. “Freaking trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President . . .” Wisconsin Republican Party official Mark Jefferson wrote to Party Chairman Hitt on January 4th.125 Hitt responded, “Ok I see I have a missed call from [Mike] Roman and a text from someone else. Did you talk to them already? This is just nuts. . . .” 126
The next day, Trump Campaign Deputy Director for Election Day Operations G. Michael Brown sent a text message to other campaign staff suggesting that he was the person who delivered the fake votes to Congress.127 After sending the group a photo of his face with the Capitol in the background, Brown said, “This has got to be the cover a book I write one day” and “I should probably buy [Mike] [R]oman a tie or something for sending me on this one. Hasn’t been done since 1876 and it was only 3 states that did it.” 128 The reference to 1876 alludes to a controversy during that election about certain States’ electoral college votes.129
President Trump and his Campaign apparently had assistance from allies on Capitol Hill for this effort, including Senator Ron Johnson, his chief of staff, and the chief of staff to Representative Mike Kelly, although Senator Johnson has said that “[his] involvement in that attempt to deliver” fake elector paperwork “spanned the course of a couple seconds.” 130 On the morning of January 6th, Representative Kelly’s then-chief of staff texted an aide to the Vice President, Chris Hodgson, about hand-delivering the fake elector votes to the Vice President’s team before the joint session, a message that Hodgson ignored: “Just following up-any chance you or someone from your team can meet to take the Michigan and Wisconsin packets.” 131
According to the office of Senator Ron Johnson, Representative Kelly’s chief of staff then had a phone call with Senator Johnson’s chief of staff at 11:58 a.m. “about how Kelly’s office could get us the electors [sic] because they had it.” 132 Shortly after 11:30 a.m., the Trump Campaign’s lead attorney in Wisconsin had texted Senator Johnson expressing a “[n]eed to get a document on Wisconsin electors to you [for] the VP immediately. Is there a staff person I can talk to immediately.” 133 Senator Johnson then put his chief of staff in touch with the campaign to handle the issue.134
Shortly afterwards, Senator Johnson’s chief of staff texted Hodgson: “[Sen.] Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise.” 135 When Hodgson asked what it was, the response he got was, “Alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them.” 136 Hodgson did not mince words: “Do not give that to him [the Vice President]. He’s about to walk over to preside over the joint session, those were supposed to come in through the mail.” 137
Those fake electoral votes, which the Trump team tried for weeks to manufacture and deliver, never made it to the Vice President. But they would have been invalid even if they did arrive on time. The Trump team’s activities were based on the false pretense that these fake electoral votes had a decisive role to play at the joint session of Congress. And yet any such role that they could have played would have helped unlawfully obstruct an official proceeding that determines how our Nation carries out the peaceful transfer of power between Presidents.
Indeed, as the joint session approached, Senator Mike Lee had expressed grave concerns about the fake elector effort in a series of text messages to one of the Trump team’s senior legal advisors. Although Senator Lee had spent a month encouraging the idea of having State legislatures endorse competing electors for Trump, he grew alarmed as it became clear that the Trump team wanted the fake electors’ votes to be considered on January 6th
...
On December 30th, Senator Lee texted Trump advisor Cleta Mitchell that January 6th was “a dangerous idea,” including “for the republic itself.” 139 He explained that, “I don’t think we have any valid basis for objecting to the electors” because “it cannot be true that we can object to any state’s presidential electors simply because we don’t think they handled their election well or suspect illegal activity.” 140 Senator Lee even questioned her about the plan’s dangerous long-term consequences: “[w]ill you please explain to me how this doesn’t create a slippery slope problem for all future presidential elections?” 141
ENDNOTES
j6cleta
file:///C:/Users/patmc/Downloads/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000083769.pdf
may 18 2022 rowlet irving atty under oath subpoena did not do docs, not did atty bc not enough time
zuckerbucks]
...18
1 engaging in partisan campaign intervention. And that ultimately flowed to targeted
2 election offices in Democrat cities in targeted states in order to manipulate the outcome
3 of the election. And I was aware that there had been -- that there was activity with this
4 private funding. And I knew -- I've been involved in this for a long time. I watched the
5 left, I've documented the amount of money they spend, and I knew what they were up
6 to, but unfortunately, that's just not something that conservatives ever had -- I never had
7 been able to persuade very many people that that was something to worry about.
8 That's changed now. It took what happened in 2020 for conservatives to realize that
9 they can no longer leave that playing field to the left.
10 Q In the preelection period, so meaning before November 3, did you try to
11 assemble any group of people together to look at these issues?
12 A I did. I reached out to some people that I knew would be useful and
13 helpful. But then nothing had ever happened, so I went on about my business.
14 Q Who did you reach out to?
15 A John Eastman, who's been a friend of mine for many years. Tom Fitton,
16 Jenny Beth Martin, Christian Adams. Not too many people. I didn't want to get out
17 over my skis until I knew that something was going to actually be formalized. It wasn't,
18 so I stopped.
Why wasn't it formalized?
I don't know.
Did anybody tell you why they wouldn't or didn't want to participate in a
22 group like that
...[je war games] confid agr w/ clients] GA hilbert] fulon cty, tip line]
They were volunteers at the state party.
Any names that you recall that you worked with, primarily?
Jenny Beth Martin and Courtney Kramer were two of the people who
4 worked on assembling all the interviews and affidavits. But there were others,
5 volunteer lawyers who had come in from other states. I don't remember their names.
What about Alex Kaufman? What was his role with your team?
Well, Alex, he's a litigator, brilliant young man, represented the Republican
8 Party of Fulton County. And he had the most knowledge of the state election code
38
9 because he had been involved in cases involving elections and campaigns for a number of
10 years. So he was really our go-to person for the sensitive law of the Georgia Election
11 Code.
12 Q Was Dr. Eastman, somebody you talked about earlier, was he at all involved
13 with your team in Georgia in the postelection period?
Not until -- he was not involved with the election contest.
Was he involved otherwise?
There were -- there were people, lawyers from across the country, who were
17 preparing other cases. And I connected John to talk to some of the rest of the legal
18 team after the election contest was filed.
So later in December then, is that fair?
That would have been later. I was very focused on the election contest.
How did your team in Georgia interact with other lawyers involved in
22 election challenges? And I'll go through a few names. Sidney Powell, what was her
23 role, if any, with respect to issues in Georgia?
24 A Not any, really. I talked to her early on, but then -- I talked to a lot of
25 people when I first arrived and entertained information from a lot of different sources.
...
the people who would go out and talk to witnesses and collect affidavits; is that right,
2 that she would do that?
That's right. She was one of the people, yes.
Is she an attorney?
No, but she's smarter than most of the lawyers I know. And she's from
6 there. So she knew how to find people and so she would take lawyers with her.
7 Q Other than the experts, would you meet with these other witnesses who
8 provided affidavits to support the election suit?
9 A Some. Some. But we had a team, and I didn't have to -- I didn't have to
10 double up and do whatever the right fielder was doing, because we would have a good
11 right fielder. I wouldn't have to double up and do what the third baseman was doing,
12 because we had a good third baseman. We built a pretty good team. We were
13 volunteers at -- initially. And people had their own responsibilities for gathering the
14 evidence in order to put it into the election contest.
Are you familiar with a person named Ken Chesebro, C-h-e-s-e-b-r-o?
I don't recognize that name, no.
What about Mark Martin? Do you know somebody named Mark Martin?
I don't recognize that name.
I believe he's a former chief justice or justice on North Carolina Supreme
20 Court. Does that refresh anything related to Mr. Martin?
21 A No.
22 Q What about Kurt Wilson or Bill Olson? Do those names mean anything to
23 you?
24 A I know Bill Olson. He's a First Amendment lawyer in northern Virginia.
25 Kurt Olson, I know that name, but I hear it -- actually, I heard it just the other day,
...
1 Georgia?
A I don't think I feel comfortable answering that question.
Q Because why?
A Privilege.
Q You think that would call for an attorney-client communication?
A I do, yes.
We'll note that objection then for the record.
The Witness. Okay.
Q Did Mr. Giuliani have any kind of role when you first began working on
11 election-related issues on November 4?
Not initially.
Do you know why he came in later?
No.
Q Do you remember roughly when you began interacting with Mr. Giuliani on
16 election-related issues?
I really -- I don't. It's a bit of a blur. So I don't really know.
Did you ever meet with Mr. Giuliani in person to discuss the work in
19 Georgia?
I don't think I did, actually. Now that you asked me that, I don't think I did.
How about any of the team? I'll just name a few people.
Katherine Friess?
A No, I don't recognize that name.
Q Christina Bobb?
A I recognize the name, but I don't recall having any interaction with her.
...
w about Boris Epshteyn? Did you ever work with Mr. Epshteyn related
2 to your efforts in Georgia?
I did have some phone calls with Boris.
And would your communications or would you understand your
5 communications with Mr. Epshteyn to be privileged?
6 A I did, yeah. He was part of the legal team with Rudy.
7 Q What about Bernie Kerik? Did you ever work with Mr. Kerik or
8 communicate with him related to your work in Georgia?
I talked to him a couple of times, yes.
Q Did he have a role in helping to investigate or look into any of the allegations
11 in Georgia?
No.
What were your communications with Mr. Kerik about?
There were a number of people, as I said, who wanted us to investigate the
15 voting machines.
He was one of them?
I would just say there were a number of people that wanted us to include
18 allegations about the voting machines, and we chose not to do that.
19 Q Did you have any calls where Mr. Kerik was a party with outsiders, third
20 parties, election officials or otherwise, to discuss voting machines?
No.
Did you have any calls -- other than an obvious one being the Raffensperger
23 call in January, any calls with election officials to discuss voting machines or where the
24 topic of voting machines came up?
25 A I did not. It doesn't mean that there weren't people -- it doesn't mean thay
...
Okay. So the Mike Lee here, is that Senator Mike Lee?
It is.
What's your relationship with Senator Lee?
He's my client and a very close friend.
Is he a client related to the election issues in the November 2020 election?
48
A I don't think he was on the ballot then. But I work with him on lots of legal
7 issues related to his campaign, his candidacy, his service as a senator, et cetera.
8 Q He reached out to you on November 2 in that first message and said, "What
9 should I be doing right now? I'm trying to find out what's winnable and what isn't." He
10 said, "I suspect that the only way to win this election would involve identifying systemic
11 fraud." And then you say, "And I think that has happened in key states nationwide.
12 Working on that now."
13 Could you tell us just what this exchange you had with Senator Lee was about,
14 what prompted it?
15 A I don't know what prompted it.
16 Q Okay. Do you remember having a call with Senator Lee where you
17 discussed election fraud before this exchange of messages?
November 7.
I don't have any recollection of that, no. But I talk to him frequently.
You say, "I think this has happened in key states nationwide." Again, this is
Yes.
What made you think that systemic fraud was happening in key states
23 nationwide on that date?
24 A Because I have a good friend who is an election lawyer in Philadelphia.
25 actually talked with her a week before the election. I started to write an article,
49
1 actually, the week before the election saying brace yourselves, people, this is what we're
2 getting ready to see in Philadelphia. And so I knew a little bit about what was going on
3 there. And -- particularly because I knew about the massive, nearly half a billion dollars,
4 although I didn't know the number at the time, but I knew there were massive funds
5 funding from Mark Zuckerberg into election offices. And I find that to be reprehensible.
6 And I've known about that before the election. I thought we were seeing some of the
7 results of that in Georgia and Fulton County as well as in Pennsylvania.
...[focus on zuck states] [c word concede?]
...1 This is the same day that -- these text messages occurred the same day that the media
2 called the election for President Biden. Does that help?
No. No.
Okay. We can pull up Exhibit Number 5, please. Just let us know when
5 you can see that, please.
Okay.
This is a chain, November 13 emails, including various folks. One is this
8 Google groups -- 20024 Google group. Do you know what that is?
No.
I believe it's identified as Groundswell. Do you know what Groundswell is?
It was a group of conservative leaders.
What was their role -- what was your role with Groundswell, if anything?
I would get copied on things.
Is there a membership structure? Were you a member of Groundswell?
This doesn't have a membership. It's just a group of people on our listserv.
And you were a person on that listserv then; is that right?
Yes. And I would weigh in from time to time.
Who is Barbara Ledeen?
Barbara Ledeen.
Who is that?
She's a conservative leader who's been very involved over the years in
22 judicial confirmations in the Senate.
How about Christian Adams, who is that?
He's the president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal
25 Foundation, a former Justice Department lawyer.
...[manning groundswell]
...55
1 Q And so at this point, then, November 13, I don't want to put words in your
2 mouth, but it seems like you're concerned that this computer fraud issue, voting
3 machines issue hasn't been fully established, sufficient to say in court or otherwise. Is
4 that fair?
5 A In my opinion, that's correct. That's why we didn't include it in our lawsuit.
6 It's one thing to make public statements, but it's different when you got to put it in a
7 lawsuit and somebody has to look at a judge and you got to make sure that what you
8 put -- I actually care about attorneys and the rule of law.
9 Q Groundswell is a group that Ginni Thomas is associated with. Do you know
10 Ms. Thomas?
I know her very well. She's a very dear friend.
Do you work --
She's been badly treated by you guys in the media.
Did you work with her at all related to postelection efforts after the
15 November 2020 election?
her.
What -- how do you define "work with"? Do I talk to her? I've talked to
What do you talk about?
We talked about what was going on in Georgia.
Did she give you any recommendations?
No. She asks me what I think.
Did she -- other than recommendations, did she make any suggestions, quick
23 picture of the election, not only in Georgia, but in other states about what she thought
24 should happen?
25 A No, no, no.
1 Q Did she say anything about her interactions with Mr. Meadows or anybody
2 in the White House? no
...
1 Q Did she say anything about her interactions with Mr. Meadows or anybody
2 in the White House?
No.
Did she say anything about her -- just to drill down on that a little bit more
5 specifically -- about any interaction she may have had with the President in the
6 postelection period?
7 A No. Not that I can remember. I can't remember having conversations
8 with her other than just very briefly.
What were the conversations that you remember? Tell us about that.
Just like that. Just like that. What you just showed me. People were
11 asking questions. They wanted to know what was going on. I'm a lawyer. There
12 aren't many lawyers involved with conservative groups. I've represented a lot of the
13 organizations. I represented a number of the organizations when Lois Lerner and the
14 IRS came after them and the conservatives in the targeting of the Tea Party and
15 conservative groups in 2010, '11, '12, '13, and so I'm a trusted source for information.
16 So they wanted to know -- they are laymen. They wanted to know what was going on.
17 Q Do you recall ever talking to Ms. Thomas about state legislatures choosing
18 electors in the presidential election?
19 A I don't recall. I don't know. I may have. I may have. I may refer to
56
20 John Eastman. I remember looking at the statutes and looking at the memoranda, and
21 those were not privileged. Those were in the public domain.
22 Q Do you remember sharing any of those memoranda, legal or factual
23 memoranda, with Ms. Thomas or anybody else at Groundswell?
24 A Well, Groundswell is not a formal organization. It's just a listserv. So
25 there are a lot of people who are on that listserv, and I can't sit here today and tell you,
...
no, I didn't send anything to anybody on that list. I'm sure I probably did. This is an
2 example of it.
3 Q How about Ms. Thomas? Do you remember sharing any legal or factual
4 memoranda with Ms. Thomas?
5 A I do not have any present recollection of that. I do not. It doesn't mean I
6 didn't.
7 A follow-up on these documents. One quick question and this
8 takes us back a little bit, Ms. Mitchell. But I believe earlier you mentioned that you had
9 connected Dr. Eastman with other lawyers on the campaign at some point in December.
10 And I'm wondering who on the campaign you connected him with. Apologies --
The Witness. I don't think I said that.
Didyou--
The Witness. John Eastman -- I had connected John Eastman -- I can't remember
14 who I connected him with. But he had his own relationships with people on the
15 campaign and the President and all. I didn't have to connect him.
16 Did you ever connect him with any other conservative legal
17 organizations, any other members of Congress, anyone else like that.
Mr. Rowley. Time frame?
Postelection period leading up to January 6.
The Witness. Well, John did a memo about what is the authority under the
21 Constitution of state legislatures with regard to us, the selection of electors, presidential
22 electors. He did a memo and I think I did send that to some people because I thought
23 this was worth looking at. But that's -- I don't even remember who I sent it to. I wasn't
24 his PR person. John doesn't need me to do that.
25 ~ Understood....
...58
1 And I think- will probably cover some of that later, so I will pass things
2 back to him.
The Witness. Okay.
5 Q If we can pull up Exhibit Number 6, please. Tell us when that comes up for
6 you, Ms. Mitchell.
A Okay.
Q So this is an email exchange you provided to us, and it involves you as well as
9 an email recipient, Thirdwave2@speakergingrich.com.
A Yes.
Q Do you understand that that email address is the email address for Newt
12 Gingrich?
A Yes.
Q How was Mr. Gingrich involved in postelection efforts?
A Well, I've known Newt for many years, and he called me and he knew -- he
16 found out I was in Georgia. You may remember, he represented Georgia in Congress,
17 lived in Georgia for many years. He called and offered to help any way that he could
18 and wanted to know what was going on and what he could do to help.
19 I had lots of calls like that from lots of people. I know a lot of people. And so I
20 had a lot of calls from people like that. But Newt has always been a good friend and
21 brilliant and strategic.
Q Did Mr. Gingrich --
A So he was someone I talked to.
Q Did he help fund any litigation expenses or efforts?
A I don't have any idea.
...[gingrich says maybe i cd get him paid]
...65
1 Q Did Mr. Meadows ask Mr. Geels to get this type of data from the Georgia
2 Secretary of State's office?
3 A I don't know that he would have done it separately or if we just did it
4 together or whatever. But we made lots of different efforts from a lot of different
5 sources to try to get them to sit down with us and go over what we saw as problems in
6 the election data. They never would.
7 Q And ultimately, of course, you sued or the legal team in Georgia sued
8 Mr. Raffensperger as part of Trump versus Raffensperger; correct?
Uh-huh, yes.
Q Bringing up Exhibit Number 9, please. This is a document you provided to
11 us. It's text messages exchanged with somebody named Chip Roy.
Who is Chip Roy?
He's a congressman from Texas.
How do you know Mr. Roy?
I've known him since he worked for Senator Cruz. He was Senator Cruz's
16 chief of staff. I was Senator Cruz's lawyer and I got to know Chip when he worked for
17 Senator Cruz, and we are still good friends.
18 Q If you go to page 2 of this -- and this -- I should say that also in this, at least
19 on the messages, was Mr. Mark Meadows.
Okay.
It doesn't look like he responded to anything. So Mr. Roy reached out to
22 you on November 29 and says, "Any update on litigation/talking points." You say, "I will
23 have something tonight."
24 Do you know why Mr. Roy was reaching out to both you and Mr. Meadows for this
25 information?
66
1 A Because he wanted to know what was going on. He wanted factual
2 information. And I've known Chip for a long time before he ran for Congress, since he
3 ran for Congress, since he's been in Congress. I have a lot of members of Congress who
4 reach out to me about information, ways I can help them, and he wanted to know.
5 Q He says, "Great, I'm trying to get our folks on the sheet of music for
6 messaging." Do you know who he was talking about when he said "get our folks on the
7 sheet of music for messaging"?
8 A I don't know. I don't know for certain, but he's a member of the House
9 Freedom Caucus, and I presume that he might be referring to them, perhaps, or some
10 subgroup thereof.
11 Q Then you sent him a message about Georgia Election Code and the election..
alec lisa, eastman]
...But Exhibit Number 20, tell us when you can see it there, Ms. Mitchell.
I see it.
Q Okay. This is an email starting in kind of the middle of page 1 there. You
4 scroll down just a tiny bit. There we go.
5 It's from you to John Eastman on November 5. The subject line is "Legal Memo."
6 You say, "John, what would you think of producing a legal memo outlining the
7 Constitutional role of state legislators in designating electors. Rather than governors,
8 the U.S. Constitution vests that responsibility with state legislators." You say, "Starting
9 with these Constitutional reports, would you be willing to discuss it with Dick Morris?
10 What about that?"
11 Why did you reach out to Dr. Eastman and ask him to do this.
12 A Because he and I had talked about it previously, and I had looked at that
13 statute actually before the election. As I told you, I think that Federal Statute. 2 U.S.C.
14 Section 3, et al., I think that that statute is unconstitutional because it provides for a role
15 where the governor of a state, the chief executive officer and the chief elections official
16 to have a role in the transmittal of electors, and I think that's inappropriate and not
17 authorized under the Constitution. I think it's a separation of powers argument
18 concern.
19 And so I had -- I think I talked to John about it at some point and -- before the
20 election, and then -- but I reached out to him because Dick Morris had called me. Dick
21 Morris has been a client of mine, a friend of mine, and he called to ask me what I thought
22 about the about legislative prerogatives. So I reached out to John about talking to Dick
23 and also I thought he should write a memo, which he did. I don't remember if he gave it
24 to me or somebody else, but I think I ultimately received it. It's very well done, very
25 thoughtful.
...[gore stole 2000? marc elias depreive 2 wonaen gop?] eastman memo to lisa alec nelson] seth grove oversight pa] victoria toe good friends joe she rached out to state reps]
110 pp of frausd evidence] do not recall re dick m] sen lee mo brooks] she says she not inv w fake electors above paygrade]
...92
1 with Senator Lee, what she told Senator Lee, or what he said to her.
2 - I'm trying to understand -- I'm trying to understand what
3 Ms. Mitchell is saying.
4 The Witness. It seems to me that it speaks for itself. The communications
5 speak for itself.
Are you refusing to answer the question I asked you?7
A I'm not refusing to answer. You keep asking me the same thing and I keep
9 telling you the same thing.
I don't think you've answered.
I think state legislatures have a certain authority and I think members of
12 Congress have a separate distinct responsibility and authority. And I don't think any of
13 this, none of it, should rise to the level of your badgering me, because I'm a lawyer and
14 I'm having a conversation with a senator about the constitutional prerogatives of the
15 Senate.
Q Ms. Mitchell --16
A I'm not -- yes, you are. And I'm not refusing to answer. I'm telling you
That's the conversation. That's roughly the way Ithat the document speaks for itself.
19 remember it. And I would like to move on.
20 Q Okay. So I'm just going to ask you one more time, because I don't believe
21 you've answered the question. I'm happy to move on when you've answered the
22 question.
23 A I'm not going to tell you what I think and speculate. Ask me about what I
24 did in a specific thing and I will try my best to answer that.
25 Q That's great.
93
1 So I'm just asking you: Are you telling Senator Lee that he and the United States
2 Congress has the authority to reject any electoral slate submitted by a legislature or
3 otherwise to the joint session of Congress in a presidential election? Is that what you're
4 saying to Senator Lee?
5 A Here is what I'm going to tell you one more time. The document speaks for
6 itself. I'm not going to speculate further, not on what I meant or what my intent. The
7 document speaks for itself.
8 Q Ms. Mitchell, I'm not trying to make this difficult. I just would like an
9 answer to the question.
I have answered the question.
I don't believe you have, Ms. Mitchell. So --
What difference does it make what I think.
...
lee askes bout electors, she says ask meadow, refdactions b/c he is her client]
...
Mr. Irving. No sweat.
-:Q Give me just one moment, please, Ms. Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell, I need to
4 step out for just one moment, but Mr. Roselman has some questions, and I'll be right
5 back.
6 By
7 Q I appreciate your bearing with me, Ms. Mitchell. Next we're going to direct
8 you to Exhibit Number 32. And we'll take you down to the bottom of this email
9 exchange, which looks like it took place on December 9, 2020, which is at the bottom of
10 page 3. It looks like this is a communication between you and an individual named Ken
11 Blackwell.
12 While we're pulling this up for you, can you tell me, who is Ken Blackwell and what
13 is your relationship with him?
14 A He is a very good friend. He's a former Secretary of State of Ohio. He's a
15 long-time expert on election law. He chaired the Census Oversight Board in the
16 2010 -- maybe 2000 census. He's very knowledgeable about elections and election law
17 and a leading conservative.
18 Q Understood.
19 And in the message at the bottom of this chain you write to Mr. Blackwell, "What
20 if I go to Mark Meadows and tell him you will take charge of making sure the Trump
21 electors in the five states convene on Monday and cast their electoral votes for Trump
22 and send those their votes as per the procedure outlined in federal law?"
23 What was your role generally in suggesting to Mr. Meadows candidates for people
24 who might have a role in organizing this alternative slate of elector effort.
25 A Well, Ken reached out to me and I said, well, why don't you do it. Why
...[maxine waters and barb boxer have rejected electors. had no reason]
...Q So let's move on to Exhibit 34.
Ms. Mitchell, this looks like it is a December 12, 2020, email exchange between
25 you and somebody named Tom Fitton. It looks like Mr. Fitton asks you, "Has there been
102
1 any follow-up to your alternate electors idea?"
2 And you responded, "I think the Georgia Trump electors are meeting on Monday.
3 I don't know about other states. I gave up after seeing all the emails about the concerns
4 and the challenges, et cetera."
5 My first question to you is: What was your understanding of what the plan was
6 with respect to Georgia electors and meeting and casting electoral votes.
7 A Well, again, this email speaks for itself, in which it says, "I think the Georgia
8 Trump electors are meeting on Monday." I think.
Why did you think that?
I don't know, but apparently I did, because I said that.
Did you speak to any of the Georgia electors about their plans to cast votes?
I only know one of the Georgia electors, and that's David Shafer, who was
13 one of our plaintiffs in our election contest.
14 Q Did you speak to anyone in the state GOP or anyone in the RNC about
15 whether the Georgia electors might meet?
16 A I don't know where I had heard that the Georgia electors were meeting.
17 have no idea. Because I really wasn't involved in that. It just wasn't something I was
18 paying a lot of attention to. There was a lot of interest in that, but it wasn't something
19 that was particularly on my radar screen. That's why I was suggesting to Ken Blackwell
20 you care about this, why don't I talk to Mark Meadows and you handle it. And then I
21 said in this I gave up after seeing all the emails about concerns and challenges. I didn't
22 have time for this. It wasn't what I was -- it wasn't what I was supposed to be doing.
23 Q So you write here that you gave up after seeing all the emails about the
24 concerns and the challenges, et cetera.
25 What were the concerns and the challenges that you were referring to?
...knows troupis WI]
She was a congressional staffer.
To whom?
Representative Louie Gohmert.
What was her role, if any, in this postelection period assisting you or your
5 efforts in Georgia?
It's just a bunch of people talking. She had no role.
Is she somebody who is on the Groundswell listserv?
Yes.
Understood. Thank you.
A She was. I don't know if she is now. Groundswell doesn't exist anymore.
Mr. Rowley. Counsel, excuse me. I'll note that these documents were not
12 included in the ones you gave us just before the deposition, and we've not had an
13 opportunity to review these ahead of time.
14 - They should have been. We gave you everything yesterday. Or
15 the day before even.
16 Mr. Rowley. There are some documents now that we haven't seen.
~ This is a document you produced. It's Bates 26218.
Mr. Rowley. I wanted to bring your attention to that the Chesebro memo were
19 documents we had not seen before in your exhibits.
20 I believe they were in the box. I can confirm that off offline, but
21 they were in the production. We can confirm that.
22
23 Q On this email, Ms. Mitchell, you say, "It's hugely important that
24 conservatives pressure state legislatures/legislators in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
25 Michigan and Arizona to designate the Trump electors slate."
108
1 And then you say at the end, "The pressure is more important than the
2 govs -- governors and attorney generals to bring a lawsuit. Conservative leaders must
3 mobilize the ground troops ASAP."
4 What do you mean by the need to pressure state legislatures.
5 A Just what I said. I'm constantly telling conservative leaders that instead of
6 sitting around and pulling fingers and waiting for some elected official to do something,
7 that they need to get organized. I did that all the time. And that's basically what I said
8 here. They wanted Alabama and Louisiana and all to join the lawsuit, the Texas lawsuit.
9 I said I think you ought to be focused on the state legislators.
10 Q And you had, of course, just filed the lawsuit in Georgia or been part of the
11 team that filed the lawsuit in Georgia.
A That's right.
Q So I guess why not the need to do both?
A What.
Q Why not the need to do both, pressure the state legislatures and follow the
16 more traditional litigation manner.
A What do you mean, why do I need to do both? What do you mean.
Q Why -- just that. Why did you think it was necessary to do both? Why
19 not just challenge in the courts?
A We did challenge it in the courts. We filed an election contest in Georgia.
Q So why also do this?
A I'm sorry. I'm not going to give you my ten cents of political mobilizing. It
23 speaks for itself.
24 Q That is what I'm asking you, though. Why was it important to do this as
25 well, the state legislatures?
...jan 4 zoom w hawley cruz daines staff mcc mtg legis dir; sen graham req info]
suggest to marc short that VP reject votes; not aware on jab 6 event' taled w trump on 6th but will not say what] decided to dismiss lawsuits? star chamber, not much rponse on GA call
an 1 23 maya GUK
Former President Donald Trump made a “secret” $1 million donation to the election audit conducted in Arizona following his false claims that the election was stolen from him, the Guardian reports.
The audit was requested by Arizona GOP senators, and doubted by many of their colleagues due to the “wild conspiracy theories” it mirrored. An assertion “that bamboo fibers found in ballot sheets proved they had been printed in Asia” even caused some local GOP members to deem the probe a “grift disguised as an audit.”
But nevertheless, the audit persisted.
Although eventually proven baseless and unsuccessful, The Guardian reports that “one of the largest benefactors” behind this attempt to counter the 2020 election results remained a secret for nearly two years.
But watchdog group “Documented” was able to track funding for the failed assessment and eventually landed on Trump’s super PAC, Save America.
First, the group discovered that _{Cyber Ninjas}_, the Florida company that conducted the audit, was provided $5.7 million by far-right groups, and then given an additional $1 million from former Trump advisor and attorney Cleta Mitchell.
Still, questions around the origin of the $1 million remained unanswered.
TheNew York Timesreports that in September of 2021, “unnamed ‘officials,’” as well as Arizona GOP senators who requested the election audit, adamantly denied Trump’s contribution.
However, with its research on many corporate, tax and campaign finance filings, as well as emails and text messages between Trump allies that were obtained by nonpartisan accountability group American Oversight, "Documented" managed to counter those claims.
The Guardian broke down the process of how the watchdog group traced the donation back to Trump.
Like many incidents surrounding Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020, tracing back Trump’s contribution to the audit starts with the Jan. 6 committee.
The committee’s final report mentioned that Trump super PAC, Save America, donated $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) — led by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows — but did not disclose the origin or the reason for the money.
Further research revealed that Trump’s contribution possibly began around June 2021, as accountability group American Oversighttracked text messages between retired Army officer and “arch election denier” Phil Waldron and Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that conducted the audit.
Waldron texted Logan, “Kurt is going to talk to 45 today, about $.”
According to the Guardian, “Kurt” likely referred toKurt Olden, an “election denying lawyer.” He continued, “Mike L talking to Corey L,” referring to CEO of MyPillow and devoted Trump supporter Mike Lindell and Trump campaign manager Corey Lewondowski.
A couple of weeks later, Waldron asked Logan if he had received a $1 million payment from Lewondowski. He texted, “Supposedly Kurt talked to Trump and they got 1 mil for you,” but he noted he “couldn’t verify who sent and received.”
According to The Guardian, the Federal Election Commission reported that less than two weeks later, on July 26, 2021, Save America transferred the $1 million to CPI. Two days later, a new group, American Voting Rights Foundation (AVRF) “registered as a corporation in Delaware.”
CPI donated $1 million to AVRF — the group’s first and only donation — in 2021, and although the date of donation is unknown, the clear relationship between the groups, the “timing and amounts” of the transfers, as well as the revealed text messages between Trump allies all leads to one culprit: Trump.
Furthermore, on the day AVRF registered as a corporation, Trump attorney Mitchell emailed Cyber Ninjas CEo Loganand put him in touch with the audit spokesperson, Randy Pullen as well as AVRF treasurer Tom Datwyler.
The Arizona Republic recently confirmed that Trump was notified of the process the whole time
GOP vice-chair of Maricopa County board of supervisors Bill Gates told The Guardian he is “disappointed, but not surprised” by the revelation.
“At the very least, it is highly hypocritical for the Arizona state senate to have allowed the audit to be funded in this fashion,” Gates said.
Ultimately, even after the great lengths Trump and his cohort of election deniers went to assist in the audit, the goal to overturn Arizona's election was never met. The Guardian reports that in 2020, President Joe Biden won Maricopa County, the most populated in Arizona and where the audit took place, by 45,109 votes.
Regarding the morality of the audit, Gates added that Arizona law states, “electoral candidates are not allowed to fund vote recounts which have to be financed with taxpayer dollars.” And although the audit was “technically not a recount,” it’s clear the intent was the same.
an badash 1 23
Lobbyist and promoter of Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” **Ginni Thomas**, is uniting with ex-Trump attorney **Cleta Mitchell** and two dozen others from the far-right to attack and oppose **GOP Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy**‘s attempt to become Speaker of the House.
In a joint letter from the Conservative Action Project, Thomas, the spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Mitchell, and the other 24 signatories assail McCarthy’s leadership.
“Conservative organizations and the millions of grassroots conservatives we represent are united in our support of the 20 courageous members of Congress seeking to change the status quo in Washington,” the letter reads.
Those 20 have voted against McCarthy for Speaker.
“Rather than engage them in a good faith negotiation, Rep. Kevin McCarthy has instead maligned both the requests and the messengers. He has publicly and through proxies leveled attacks against members of his own party, including threatening to deny committee assignments for those who continue to oppose him. Moreover, he has failed to answer for, or commit to halting, his coordinated efforts in the 2022 elections to promote moderate Republican candidates over conservatives," it charges.
“Because of this, he has thus far failed to garner the 218 votes necessary to lead the House GOP conference in three separate rounds of voting, it adds, although as of now that McCarthy has lost five votes," the letter adds. “The job of the Speaker is to garner a consensus among disparate factions of the party, and unite them.”
The Conservative Action Project, founded in 2008, was behind the 2010 “Mount Vernon Statement,” an attack on the left that wrongly claims the U.S. Constitution promotes a conservative point of view. It accused the federal government of acting “with little concern for the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.” There were Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate at the time, and Barack Obama was President.
Cleta Mitchell participated in Donald Trump’s infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger, during which he pressured the Georgia Secretary of State to “find 11,780 votes.” Trump is under criminal investigation over that call. Last year The New York Times reported Mitchell had been subpoenaed by investigators.
Mitchell, an anti-LGBTQ activist, was also subpoenaed by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
She “participated in efforts to prevent, delay, or overturn election results,” and “promoted false claims of election fraud to Members of Congress,” the Committee’s chairman Bennie Thompson charged last year.
Among the other signatories are Kenneth Blackwell of the **Family Research Council**, which appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups. Also, David Bossie, the conservative activist and lobbyist who heads Citizens United, the group that won the Supreme Court case that has led to massive amounts of dark money in American politics.
an 11 22 badash
Political experts are warning about a group of nearly 60 far-right wing politicos including **Ginni Thomas**, **Matt Schlapp**, and **Cleta Mitchell** who reportedly will issue a letter calling for the House and Senate to delay votes on leadership positions including Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader.
Axios’ Jonathan first reported the news, posting at least part of the letter and the list of signatories (below).
Some of the other more recognizable names on the letter include **Mark Meadows**, the former Trump White House chief of staff; **Cleta Mitchell**, the attorney who The New York Times calls the “architect of Donald J. Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election”; former Trump attorney **Jenna Ellis**; former U.S. Senator and former Heritage Foundation president **Jim DeMint** (R-SC); former Trump deputy campaign manager **David Bossie**, the right wing activist and head of the organization responsible for the **Citizens United** Supreme Court lawsuit that made countless billions of dark money in political elections legal.
Also, white supremacist and disgraced former U.S. Congressman **Steve King** (R-IA); convicted felon and disgraced former U.S. Congressman **Steve Stockman** (R-TX), right-wing religious extremist **Kenneth Blackwell** of the **Family Research Council**, which is on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups, and others.
https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/trump-lawyers/
no lnx
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan has uncovered a new trove of emails that show Trump lawyers going into full meltdown mode as their legal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election imploded.
The emails in question date from December 30th, 2020 until January 8th, 2021, and they show that Trump lawyers continued to push to overturn the election even after Trump supporters launched a deadly riot at the United States Capitol that sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives.
:{
}:
The emails also show significant infighting, particularly between lawyers Cleta Mitchell and Bruce Marks after Marks apparently botched a complaint that was intended to challenge the certified results in Georgia.
:{
}:
"They've done squat on this new case after saying it was all ready to go,"Mitchell wrote in an email to Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn on December 31st. "This 'team' of Bruce's is worthless. BRUCE IS WORTHLESS. So sick of them."
The emails also show Marks expressing concern about putting Trump's name on a lawsuit that was riddled with false claims about voter fraud in Georgia, which he believed could leave Trump open to legal prosecution.
"I don't know why we would place this burden on the President in a suit which will receive substantial attention and scrutiny," argued Marks, who was eventually overruled by other Trump lawyers.
Finally, the emails show that Trump lawyers continued to plow ahead with their attempts to overturn the election even after the deadly riots at the United States Capitol.
Regarding continued efforts to overturn the results in Georgia, Mitchell said in an email sent on the night of January 6th that she "spoke with POTUS and he said do the best we can" to get the results thrown out.
axios ref
Updated Nov 4, 2022 - Politics & Policy
Exclusive emails: Inside Trump's botched Georgia fight
Jonathan Swan
Zachary Basu
Late on the night of Jan. 6, 2021, as the world reeled from the shocking images of a pro-Trump mob ransacking the U.S. Capitol, conservative activist and Trump legal adviser Cleta Mitchell focused her attention elsewhere — on a crumbling voter fraud lawsuit in Georgia that could open the door to criminal exposure.
The big picture: Axios has obtained dozens of previously undisclosed emails from the time period covering Dec. 30, 2020, to Jan. 8, 2021. They shed new light on the internal machinations, pressures and disagreements at the heart of the unprecedented legal battle to keep a defeated president in power.
Why it matters: The central question of what then-President Trump and his lawyers knew when he signed sworn court documents attesting to false evidence of voter fraud in Georgia is now under scrutiny by the Justice Department, Atlanta prosecutors and the House Jan. 6 committee.
Two lawyers advising Trump were revealed over the past several weeks to have raised concerns about the president signing the verification, which carried the penalty of perjury. The new emails show a third, Bruce Marks, also expressed concern but was overruled.
The emails also reveal new granularity about the role of Mitchell, who since then has collaborated with the Republican Party to build an activist base of national "election monitors" — many of whom will be out in force in Tuesday's midterms.
Details: The legal discussions on the night of Jan. 6 about Georgia involved Trump himself and consideration of how to minimize exposure from the botched lawsuit and attestation.
"I spoke with POTUS and he said do the best we can," Mitchell wrote in an email timestamped 9:36 p.m. ET, to Trump campaign lawyers Justin Clark and Matthew Morgan.
The nation's capital was under citywide curfew. The House and Senate had just resumed debating objections to Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.
"We are trying to protect all concerned … just wanted to be sure you were in the loop … we will send the letter now," Mitchell wrote.
Context: A federal judge last month ordered John Eastman, a conservative attorney at the center of the scheme to overturn the election, to hand over a batch of emails to the Jan. 6 committee — finding they were "sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States."
Eastman himself presciently predicted in one email, first reported by Politico: "I have no doubt that an aggressive DA or US Atty someplace will go after both the President and his lawyers once all the dust settles on this."
Email from Cleta Mitchell to Bruce Epshteyn
Screenshot of email from Cleta Mitchell to Boris Epshteyn, obtained and redacted by Axios
Frustrations among the warring factions of outside lawyers clinging to Trump and the dream of a second term bubbled to the surface in the dying hours of 2020.
"I must tell you that Bruce & Co are utterly outrageous," Mitchell sounded off in one furious email to Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn on Dec. 31.
"They've done squat on this new case after saying it was all ready to go," she wrote, tearing into outside lawyer and decades-long voter fraud campaigner Bruce Marks. "This 'team' of Bruce's is worthless. BRUCE IS WORTHLESS. So sick of them."
Fifty-four days had passed since the election was called for Joe Biden. In six days, Congress was set to meet to certify Biden's Electoral College victory.
The army of fringe attorneys and conspiracy theorists that now had the president's ear was growing desperate.
Mitchell’s email to Epshteyn was provoked by a message from Marks the day before, Dec. 30, raising concerns about inconsistencies in the draft motion being prepared for the Georgia challenge — a federal lawsuit against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Marks had questioned the absence of a supporting memorandum of law in the draft. Mitchell fired back, blaming Marks instead: "This lawsuit is one you guys talked us into doing. So why don't you have a memorandum of law for us already?"
"Cleta, I am not going to get into emails with you like this. Please stop this," Marks responded.
Behind the scenes: Sources say Mitchell leveraged her connection to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to exert authority over the patchwork legal team.
Her bulldozing of Marks, who has made a career out of alleging massive absentee ballot fraud since 1993, may come to bear serious legal consequences for the president and his lawyers.
On Dec. 31, Marks wrote in an email to Eastman, Epshteyn and Kurt Hilbert — the Mitchell-aligned attorney leading the Georgia lawsuit — that he could find no legal requirement for Trump to personally sign a verification of the claims of voter fraud that would be incorporated as evidence.
"I don't know why we would place this burden on the President in a suit which will receive substantial attention and scrutiny," Marks argued.
After a heated back-and-forth with Hilbert, who explained that a verification was needed to seek "equitable relief," Marks eventually relented and said he would "leave this to others to resolve."
Hilbert and Marks did not respond to requests for comment.
Email from Bruce Marks
Screenshot of email sent by Bruce Marks, obtained and redacted by Axios
Between the lines: Marks is the third lawyer revealed to have raised concerns about Trump signing the verification for evidence now known to be false.
Forty-five minutes after Marks' objection, Eastman warned that Trump had been made aware that some of the allegations and evidence of voter fraud used in a previous state-level Georgia election lawsuit were inaccurate, according to emails turned over to the Jan. 6 committee.
"For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate," Eastman told Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro and outside lawyer Alex Kaufman, adding he was intentionally leaving out Marks and his team.
To protect Trump from responsibility, Hilbert suggested inserting a footnote in the lawsuit that stated the president was only relying on voter data provided to him.
A satisfied Mitchell pressed ahead and asked Eastman to get the verification approved by senior White House lawyer Eric Herschmann while she searched for a notary to certify Trump's signature via Zoom.
But a separate batch of emails previously reported by Axios reveals that later that evening, Herschmann told Mitchell and Meadows he was concerned about Trump signing a verification in support of facts that may fall apart under scrutiny.
The bottom line: None of those warnings stopped the verification from being signed and notarized just hours before midnight on New Year's Eve.
A federal judge later cited Eastman's email warning as evidence Trump "knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public."
Both Marks and Herschmann have been subpoenaed in the Justice Department's criminal investigation of the Trump-backed efforts to overturn the election. Federal agents seized Eastman's cellphone in June.
Flash forward: On the night of Jan. 6, as many Americans were still struggling to comprehend the frightening scenes at the nation's Capitol, Mitchell penned a frantic email to the Trump campaign lawyers, Justin Clark and Matthew Morgan.
"I've tried [to] reach both of you and have left voicemail messages for each of you," Mitchell wrote, as she claimed that Georgia officials were threatening to move for sanctions against the Trump legal team unless they withdrew their lawsuits.
"The potential exposure to the president and the other plaintiffs could be in the millions of dollars," she warned.
Email from Cleta Mitchell
Email from Cleta Mitchell to Trump campaign lawyers, obtained and redacted by Axios
Mitchell had attached a draft letter to Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr, dated Jan. 6, agreeing to withdraw all of the Trump-backed legal team's Georgia state and federal lawsuits as part of a "settlement" allegedly proposed by Kemp and Raffensperger.
The letter, drafted by Hilbert, claimed the Georgia officials had agreed to share election data in exchange for the dismissal of the lawsuits. Mitchell painted the alleged settlement as "something of a win" because the Georgia officials "would provide certain records that we have been requesting."
"We think that we should immediately send this letter accepting the settlement offer because we are afraid the defendants will withdraw the settlement offer. Then we will be forced to dismiss the case without getting any records whatsoever," Mitchell wrote to Morgan and Clark.
She warned that it was "now 9:30pm" ET on Jan. 6, and that she and Hilbert would be forced to send the letter within 15 minutes if they didn't hear from the campaign. The historic, bloody events of that day had not deterred Mitchell and her team from their focus on false allegations of voter fraud in Georgia.
"Kurt and Cleta, [in] no way do I have authority to sign off on this decision or this letter," Morgan replied.
Citing a previous email in which Mitchell specifically asserted that she was "in charge of Georgia," Morgan urged her to get sign-off from Trump or Meadows and said the campaign would accept the decision.
That's when Mitchell dropped her kicker: She had already spoken to Trump — whose mindset and actions on Jan. 6 are at the heart of several criminal investigations — and, according to Mitchell, he had encouraged her to follow her judgment.
Morgan declined to comment. Spokespeople for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
White House call logs obtained by the Washington Post confirm Trump and Mitchell spoke for approximately two minutes at 7:53 p.m. ET. At 9:36 p.m. ET — the very minute that Mitchell replied to the Trump campaign lawyers — Hilbert sent the letter to the Georgia AG's office.
The intrigue: Kemp and Raffensperger ultimately accepted the withdrawal of the lawsuits but disputed that there was ever a formal settlement. "Donald J. Trump voluntarily dismissed this litigation contending the dismissal is a result of settlement between the parties. It is not. There is no 'settlement,'" they stated in court.
Axios obtained the earlier Jan. 3 letter from Georgia's attorney general that Hilbert and Mitchell were referencing. An outside counsel working with the AG's office had told Hilbert that the allegations in the lawsuit "(1) are factually wrong; (2) are based on improper speculation and faulty data and data analysis; (3) lack substantive legal merit; (4) are moot; and (5) are procedurally deficient."
The lawyer said the AG's office was "willing to share as much information as we can" regarding election data, but only if the lawsuits were withdrawn. Remarkably, the letter made no reference to a "settlement" or "sanctions," as Mitchell and Hilbert had claimed.
Instead, it specifically stated that once the litigation was dropped, Hilbert could make an appointment the following day to bring exhibits from the Trump lawsuit and receive a demonstration on why the "proffered evidenced [sic] does not support the conclusions" of their court filings.
Forwarding the email to Mitchell, Hilbert wrote: "Please give to the President as this is technically an offer to settle."
In court, the Georgia officials also sharply rebuked Hilbert for his involvement in a now-infamous Jan. 2 call in which Trump sought to pressure Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to overturn Biden's election victory.
Mitchell, Meadows and Kaufman were also on that call. In an email to Trump campaign lawyers on Jan. 8 attempting to secure payment for members of the legal team, Mitchell said Kaufman was forced out of his law firm because of his involvement on the call. "Quite outrageous," she wrote.
Mitchell abruptly resigned her partnership from the law firm Foley & Lardner after the firm publicly aired concerns about her own involvement in the Jan. 2 phone call.
What's next: Despite these troubles, Mitchell has over the past 18 months redoubled her efforts and established herself as a central player in the nationwide network of Trump-allied lawyers and activists who are laying the groundwork to monitor and contest future elections.
Mitchell's project, called the "Election Integrity Network," is run out of the Conservative Partnership Institute, an influential Washington, D.C.-based think tank stocked with former senior Trump administration officials.
In a sign of how important Mitchell's efforts are to Trump, the former president, who is loath to share his PAC's money, authorized a $1 million donation to CPI. This was by far the Trump committee's largest donation to political allies in the second half of 2021.
Mitchell told Axios in a statement: "Any assertion that we are seeking to overturn future elections is a complete fabrication. There's not a word in any of our materials saying this is about 'overturning elections.' We aren't saying that. We aren't doing that."
Axios' Emma Hurt contributed reporting.
new
11 22
michael Luciano @ Mediaite: Kari Lake Says If She Were Governor, Arizona Police Would Arrest FBI Agents Enforcing a Policy That Doesn’t Even Exist.
Zachary Petrizzo @ The Daily Beast: Right-Wing Activists Stage Laughable Protest Outside Biden’s ‘Democracy’ Speech.
Ben Goggin @ NBC News: Ye paid a settlement to former employee who alleged he praised Hitler and Nazis during meetings, documents show.
Hemant Mehta @ OnlySky: Pastor insists NM Gov. candidate told him he hopes to ban abortion.
Caleb Kieffer @ Hatewatch: Former ICE Chief Taps Anti-Muslim Hate Group To Help Run Border-Focused Project.
Joe Jervis: Tabloid: MTG Dating Reporter Who Just Left His Wife.
Emine Yücel @ Talking Points Memo: Trump Adviser Cleta Mitchell Has Been Prepping For ‘Hand-To-Hand Combat’ Ahead Of Midterms.
Tags: Brian Glenn Cleta Mitchell Kanye West Kari Lake Marjorie Taylor Greene Mark Ronchetti Tom Homan Round-Up United West
earlier this year, Cleta Mitchell — the longtime right-wing election lawyer and former legal advisor to Donald Trump — was recorded outlining her vision for Election Day: an opportunity for “hand-to-hand combat with the Left,” according to recordings obtained by ABC News.
In the months since Mitchell joined Trump on that now-infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Mitchell has taken her Big Lie efforts to the streets, leading a movement to recruit fellow conspiracy theorists to become poll workers in the upcoming midterm elections.
The crusade birthed out of her work in 2020 to help spread Trump’s lies of a stolen election. Along with the Raffensperger call, Mitchell was a key figure in spreading the conspiracy theory that election workers in Fulton County, Georgia “made everybody leave” a counting room on election night in order to count thousands of illegal ballots.
The two new recordings — obtained by ABC News and described as meetings with local election groups — give us a closer look at just what exactly Mitchell’s been up to in her cross-country recruitment effort, revealing some of the strategies put in motion by Mitchell and her Trump-funded group the Election Integrity Network.
“My sole focus for the last year and a half has been how we as conservatives could build an infrastructure to dohand-to-hand combat with the Left starting at the local level,”Mitchell reportedly said on a September Zoom call.
The Election Integrity Network describes itself as a “coalition of conservative leaders, organizations, public officials and citizens dedicated to securing the legality of every American vote,” and is a project of the conservative organization Conservative Partnership Institute. In 2021, Trump’s PAC donated $1 million to the CPI — that’s one of its largest donations to date.
“We’ve got a big challenge with the elections coming up,” Mitchell said in the recording. “But if we can keep them from stealing it, I think we have a good chance to win.”
The meetings, which took place in August and September, were attended by Mitchell, members of various grassroots organizations andat least one elected state representative, according to ABC News.
On one of the calls, Mitchell also addressed criticism that her group is “creating a hostile environment.”
“The Left is so undone about our engagement as observers and poll workers and challengers and election judges and all those roles, they started a year ago this narrative,” she said.
https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/war-room-election-denial-activist-cleta-mitchell-announces-coup-memo-author-john
10/19/22
STEVE BANNON (GUEST): All progressive Democrats, take your number two pencil out and write this down. All votes don't count, OK? All votes don't count. All your illegal, all your non-chain of custody, all your non-certifiable votes don't count and they're not going to count and this is why you're throwing a fit, because you understand if you can't cheat you can't win.
I don't care if DOJ doesn't like hearing that, I don't care if Joe Biden and his illegitimate group of crooks in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue don't like it, I could care less, Nancy Pelosi or anybody.
...
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Tomorrow in Albuquerque, we have a special summit, training, for people in Albuquerque, all over New Mexico, we urge you to come.
...
We'll have training all afternoon about how people can become poll challengers and observers in New Mexico, we need people in New Mexico,John Eastman, Dr. John Eastman will be speaking, Jenny Beth Martin will be speaking, Lynn Taylor who led the charge in Virginia will be saying, giving a speech on if it can happen in Virginia in 2021, it can happen in New Mexico in 2022. So it's not too late but we've got to get out there.
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/new-two-men-very-close-to-ginni-thomasone
In early September of 2020, during the same several-week period that Ginni Thomas friend and Donald Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell was successfully recruiting Ginni Thomas friend and former Clarence Thomas law clerk John Eastman to also become a Trump lawyer, Eastman was the head of the far-right Claremont Institute Center …...
no lnx
July 17
Proof, Investigative Commentary:Two Men Very Close to Ginni Thomas—One of Them One Step Removed From Trump’s Coup Plot—Come seth abramson graphicUnder New Scrutiny, Seth Abramson, left, July 16-17, 2022. New evidence strongly suggests that it’s more imperative than ever that the House January 6 Committee get sworn testimony from the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—and do so quickly.
Introduction: In early September of 2020, during the same several-week period that Ginni Thomas friend and Donald Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell was successfully recruiting Ginni Thomas friend and former Clarence Thomas law clerk John Eastman to also become a Trump lawyer, Eastman was the head of the far-right Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.
Around this time—September 9—a member of Trump’s National Security Council, Michael Anton, authored a truly stunning article entitled “The Coming Coup?” The document is profoundly unsettling in retrospect, given Anton’s high position within Trumpworld’s intelligence apparatus.
In “The Coming Coup?”, Anton imagined the following scenario:
Violence around the time of the 2020 election propagated by left-wing groups; requiring the invocation of the Insurrection Act by then-President Trump....
Note that this very same sequence of events could equally be triggered if Trump and his political team were to stage a televised act of violence and chaos and then blame it on left-wing agitators in a premeditated way—which, in the event, is exactly what Trump used the Rudy Giuliani-Steve Bannon-John Eastman “war room” at the Willard Hotel in Washington to do during Insurrection Week. [flynn called for matial law, seize machines, rerun election under mil?]
Despite no evidence whatsoever that either Black Lives Matter activists or participants in the loose antifa movement had been present at the United States Capitol on that dark day, Trumpist partisans insisted that they had been—and immediately after the Capitol was cleared began pushing Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act on these (fraudulent) grounds.
[B]y September of 2020 it was Trump’s longtime friend, attorney, confidant, and fixer Michael Cohen who had told Congress and all America under oath that he knew for a fact that Donald Trump was not going to concede the 2020 presidential election no matter what happened in it.
Just days ago, a Mother Jones investigative report confirmed Cohen’s revelation with secretly recorded pre-election audio of Bannon—of Trump’s Insurrection Week Willard Hotel war room, which he shared with the Claremont Institute’s Eastman—confirming that in fact it was Trump who’d all along planned to execute the plot Anton wrote of for Eastman’s Claremont Institute back in September, just after Eastman came aboard Trump’s legal team at Ginni Thomas friend Cleta Mitchell’s invitation.
So Michael Cohen was right. And if you’re of the camp that believes—on significant evidence—that every accusation by Trumpworld is fact a confession, you can see in the coup plot outlined above by Trump adviser Anton precisely the sequence of events that would quite nearly be carried out by Bannon, Giulian, Eastman, Sidney Powell, Michael Lindell, Patrick Byrne, and Michael Flynn.
Within 90 days of Anton’s essay, Eastman would be working on making the seditious vision of Trump’s intel guru (which the Claremont Institute had eagerly published) a reality—though for Donald Trump, of course, rather than Joe Biden. Indeed, once Ginni Thomas friend Eastman joined Trump presidential adviser Ginni Thomas and the aforementioned Ginni Thomas friend and presidential adviser Cleta Mitchell as a Trump adviser, he appears to mostly have focused on executing Anton’s hypothetical.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who teaches digital journalism, seth abramson resized4 proof of collusionlegal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
https://documented.net/investigations/exclusive-documented-obtains-recording-of-3-hour-long-voter-suppression-strategy-session-hosted-by-alec
https://slate.com/news-and-politics**/2019/10/**alec-meeting-gerrymandering-audio-recording.html
slate no lnx audio
luxury cabanas atop Austin’s JW Marriott kept state legislators cool poolside as August-in-Texas temperatures soared above 103 degrees during each day of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s 2019 annual meeting. The gathered Republican officials could enjoy a $14 rooftop Peppered Paloma cocktail with Patrón silver, housemade grapefruit poblano soda, and Chilean salt, all while gazing over Lady Bird Lake and the nearby state Capitol, or catching a ballgame on the cabana’s 55-inch private TV.
Downstairs, meanwhile, five of the GOP’s most seasoned redistricting minds and über-lawyers would teach them the finer points of tilting maps and drawing districts that would allow them to retain such spoils for another decade.
Slate has obtained an exclusive audio recording of the closed-door panel called “How to Survive Redistricting,” moderated by influential Republican lawyer Cleta Mitchell. The panel’s four experts—Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, North Carolina election lawyer Thomas Farr, former Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, and Texas state Rep. Phil King—are among the architects and defenders of some of the most notorious gerrymanders and voter suppression plans of this decade.
During the session, the legislators were advised to treat redistricting as “political adult blood sport,” trash potential evidence before it can be discovered through litigation, avoid the word gerrymander, and make deals with black and Latino legislators that guarantee them easy reelections by packing as many minority voters as possible into their districts, thereby making the rest of the map whiter and more conservative.
“You are going to be sued. Let’s start with that.” — Cleta Mitchell
Panelists offered complicated technical advice, such as adding a legal provision that would allow a legislature to defend its maps in court even if the state attorney general refuses. And then there was less-technical advice, like being sure to put “sharp” legislators on redistricting committees because they’ll spend a lot of time explaining the maps in court.
“You are going to be sued. Let’s start with that,” Mitchell told a packed room at the ALEC gathering, attended by more than 1,400 people, including Trump administration officials and top conservative lawmakers, thinkers, donors, and activists.Mitchell made light of ALEC’s reputation as a conveyor belt for cookie-cutter conservative legislation enacted by state after state. “Mindless state legislators, we’re just pouring in information and we’re indoctrinating you, pouring into your empty skulls!” she said, sarcastically. “We’re going to teach you how to gerrymander.”:{
:{:{}:
And then she did. “Let us begin with the fact that, probably, your notes from this conference, and this workshop, will probably be part of a discovery demand,” Mitchell said on the recording, dropping the sarcasm. “My advice to you is: If you don’t want it turned over in discovery, you probably ought to get rid of it before you go home.”}:}:
View Transcript
Farr, the veteran North Carolina election lawyer whose nomination to the federal bench in North Carolina ended amid persistent allegations that he had defended efforts to suppress the black vote, compared lawsuits against GOP redistricting plans to a cancer diagnosis. “You better get some chemotherapy,” he said, “because if you don’t, things aren’t going to turn out real well for you.” He also told legislators that they needed to think about any trial as a play that he would direct as the counsel, and to be sure that they created a script that an attorney could work with before a judge.
Westmoreland, the former Georgia congressman who co-chaired a Republican 2010 redistricting initiative called REDMAP, told a story about giving black Democrats in his state mapmaking software and encouraging them to draw their “perfect district,” knowing that districts filled with minority voters would make surrounding districts whiter and more Republican.
:{“We ended up being very successful with it,” Westmoreland said.
Westmoreland recalled inviting the members of the “black caucus” to his office, “off campus,” to create their “perfect map.” One incumbent, he said, “finally fell into the trap and came over there and drew his perfect district.” To show the redistricting plan benefited black Democrats too, he “immediately got the local paper down there” to run an article on that lawmaker’s perfect district. Westmoreland then included a district as close as possible to that overwhelmingly black and Democratic one in the state’s official map. The legislator, he said, voted against the map and soon lost his seat.}:
“I promise you it’ll be beneficial to you,” he told the ALEC attendees. “They still want to be reelected. They still want to have the best district they can have.”
View Transcript
The speakers repeatedly insisted that there is no such thing as a nonpartisan redistricting process. Farr argued that maps can never be neutral. “Every time you draw a districting line, it benefits one party and hurts the other party,” he said.
:{
The idea that Republicans are simply fighting similarly skewed Democratic gerrymanders has been debunked. According to a University of Southern California study, 59 million Americans live in states where at least one chamber of the state legislature is controlled by the party that won fewer votes in 2018. In every case, Republicans drew the lines, and hold minority control. That the process is inherently political has been disproved as well: Several states, including California, Iowa, and New Jersey, use independent commissions or various neutral or bipartisan processes that have successfully created fairer and more competitive maps. Three-quarters of the seats that flipped during the 2018 U.S. House elections were drawn by commissions or courts. Studies show that maps become more representative and equitable when more parties have a seat at the table.}:
:{
Nevertheless, Farr urged these lawmakers to make their processes appear as open as possible, even though they are driven by partisanship behind closed doors.
The legislative record, he told them, must appear to be business as usual, following every statute, with every transcript and debate filed for the record.
Given that every map could end up in court, Farr advised extraordinary caution. “You never know what you might say, even if it’s unjust, that the left can take out of context and try to use to make the Republicans look like they’re evil.”
Then, in court, Farr could take it from there.}:
“It’s like I’m a director of a play,” he explained to the room. “I know what I want the play to look like for the judges when we actually have to go and defend what we’ve done in court, and so this is why you want to make it look like—I know most of you know this already—you’re very cordial, cooperative with the minority party or the opposing party. … The more you take the high road in the legislative process, the better it’s going to look in court when you have to defend what you’ve done.”
View Transcript
Republicans, Farr suggested, are outgunned by the litigation power and the expert witnesses on the side of fair maps. He complained that Republicans have only five or six expert witnesses, while Democrats have between 18 and 20 “really outstanding and smart people” able to explain “newfangled theories” about identifying gerrymanders.
Many of those expert witnesses create tens of thousands of neutral maps using nonpartisan, legal redistricting criteria. Courts in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were all persuaded to overturn maps as partisan gerrymanders by relying, in part, on simulated maps that demonstrate that the ones drawn by legislators are wild partisan outliers. This technological advancement offers the potential of using the same technology that partisans use to rig maps to strip their intent bare. For Farr, this is a great threat. He warned the legislators that computer-assisted maps would be the tactic deployed against their maps as partisan gerrymandering moves to state courts during the upcoming 2020 redistricting cycle—and that he would help them defeat those maps.
“Garbage in and garbage out,” he said. “You can read these things to get the results that you want.” Farr said that the professors working on these simulated maps were “very smart” and that the work is “very complex.” “You’ve got to get the right experts to look at their algorithm and all the backup that they have. But there’s a definite way to defeat the concept of computer-simulated maps.”
View Transcript
As Farr and Westmoreland taught lawmakers to conceal the true intent of their maps and appear to play by the rules, Von Spakovsky envisioned a longer game to change the rules of redistricting entirely.
Von Spakovsky, a member of the Trump-Kobach “election fraud” commission, urged GOP lawmakers to use citizenship data to redistrict state legislatures rather than count the total populations of districts, the latter being the constitutional standard for U.S. House districts and the longtime norm for states, as well. Most state legislatures, however, could redistrict state legislative lines based on citizen population, in most cases simply by passing a statute. (Recent revelations from the files of late GOP redistricting mastermind Thomas Hofeller demonstrated that Republicans attempted to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census to gather citizenship data for this purpose.)
“All of you need to seriously consider switching to using citizen population to do redistricting,” he said, asserting that the concept of “one person, one vote” was just something that liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court “created … out of whole cloth.”
Von Spakovsky also told lawmakers that census data is important for two reasons: the apportionment of U.S. House seats, and state and federal redistricting. Congressional apportionment based on total population, as the Constitution mandates, is “fundamentally unfair,” he said, because “states with large numbers of aliens, particularly illegal aliens, are getting more political power.”
Advertisement
“Liberals do not want you doing this,” he said, because “the higher the number of noncitizens in a district, the greater the chances they’re going to vote for a liberal.”
View Transcript
Von Spakovsky also praised Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority, 5–4 opinion earlier this year in Rucho v. Common Cause, which essentially closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering claims. But he warned that other legal avenues are still open to proponents of fair maps. “What you have to understand is this is not the end of this,” he said.
Gerrymandered maps could get challenged under state constitutions as a political question, he said, or in federal courts for unconstitutional use of race data and for diluting the votes of minorities contrary to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. He called this “the Goldilocks principle of redistricting,” noting that “you can’t use too much race,” but if you don’t use race at all, “Hispanics, African Americans are going to claim you didn’t create a district in which they can elect a candidate of their choice.”
To withstand these inevitable legal challenges, the panelists said, it is important to control not only legislative majorities but also the judges approving or rejecting redistricting plans.
“Always know who’s going to end up ruling on your maps,” Westmoreland, the Georgia lawmaker, advised. “It’s important to work with the judges, the judicial system. You need to work for your attorney generals. … You need to work with as many organizations that you can to make sure that not only you win the majority, but that you elect people that are going to be able to supervise what these maps, or what you, come up with.”
Enticing more “dance partners” from minority groups to protect their own seats is another key part of that plan.
“It’s not rocket science,” Westmoreland said. “It’s politics.”
Read the full transcript of the ALEC meeting here.
This story is part of Slate’s Who Counts? project, which investigates who has decision-making power in America and what happens to those who don’t. Read more from Dahlia
https://newrepublic.com/article/166778/cleta-mitchell-trump-lawyer-2022-midterm-elections
no lnx many
Peter Stone/June 29, 2022
Ballot Boxer
This Former Trump Lawyer Wants You to Disrupt the 2022 Midterms
Cleta Mitchell desperately tried to undo Trump's loss in Georgia in 2020. Now she's using the Big Lie to recruit conservatives as poll workers for the November elections.
A spacious ballroom at the Arizona Grand Resort in Phoenix was packed the weekend of March 11 with scores of Donald Trump loyalists still fuming about widely debunked claims that Joe Biden won the 2020 election thanks to rampant fraud. Dubbed an “election integrity summit,” the gathering was the handiwork of Trump’s former legal adviser, the veteran conservative activist Cleta Mitchell. And while Mitchell has garnered national attention for riling up Trumpists with false claims of election fraud in Georgia after the state was called for Biden, she’s now quietly channeling that anger into mobilizing activists to aggressively combat the specter of voting fraud in the next battle: the 2022 midterm elections.
Mitchell organized the Arizona summit on behalf of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit that raked in $1 million from Trump’s leadership PAC last year. Founded in 2017 by former South Carolina SenatorJim DeMint, CPI has become a hub for the Big Lie in exile, with former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows signing up as senior partner shortly after leaving the White House last year, and Mitchell joining in March 2021 as senior legal fellow. CPI boasted revenue of $5.3 million in fiscal 2019, has arranged D.C. internships for young conservatives, and has worked with other right-wing groups to push conservative goals.
But central to the institute’s current mission is Mitchell, who leads its self-styled “election integrity network.” She has engineered a roaming series of summits this year in states Republicans hope to swing back in 2024: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, and Nevada—along with the perennial battleground Florida, which Trump won. Mitchell has sold the network as a way to create state and local election “infrastructure,” which includes advocating unorthodox surveillance tactics of election officials and operations to ferret out any hints of fraud—real, or more often hypothetical.
One notable speaker at the summit, whom Mitchell interviewed on a stage, was Karen Fann, the Arizona state Senate president and 2022 national chairwoman of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that promotes model laws for states to adopt, and that Mitchell has previously advised. Arizona has already passed one anti-voting law this year, imposing onerous restrictions to prove citizenship before registering to vote, and the state legislature is currently considering a raft of other measures that would empower state officials to conduct further reviews of elections.
One attendee of the Phoenix summit, who asked for anonymity, told me that “the event definitely used the false allegations of fraud in 2020 as a call to action to rally support for vigilant engagement this year in the election process,” to spur more robust monitoring of polling sites. The attendee added: “There was a large focus on recruiting precinct officials to watch the polls and all of the other processes associated with elections.”
To voting rights advocates, the campaign looks like a recipe for voter suppression and intimidation, especially of minorities, and could incite harassment against election officials. At these summits, the 71-year-old Mitchell, members of conservative groups such as Tea Party Patriots, GOP elected officials, and Republican National Committee staffers have delivered a blunt message: Conservatives ought to expand poll watching and “clean up” voter rolls—often by working as precinct and poll officials—in order to curb any voting fraud and bolster their electoral chances in 2022.
Mitchell hails from Oklahoma, where she began her career as a Democratic member of the state legislature before moving to D.C. and switching parties in the 1990s. Since then, she has amassed an extensive résumé of conservative clients: Mitchell has done legal stints advising the National Rifle Association (where she was once a board member), numerous GOP campaigns, and several dark-money nonprofit groups.
Some veteran conservatives who know Mitchell’s work say that her advice often pushed the legal envelope. “You tell Cleta where you want to end up, and she will come up with a way to get you there, whether it’s legal or not,” one former senior NRA official told me, quipping that she’s the “fringe of the fringe.” And a GOP election lawyer who has known Mitchell for years, and requested anonymity, added: “Cleta was sort of a classic lawyer for Donald Trump because she told Trump what he wanted to hear, as opposed to what he ought to hear from his lawyer.”
Mitchell started as a volunteer legal adviser to bolster Trump’s fraud claims in Georgia. She was recruited by Meadows the day after the 2020 election and eventually emerged as part of the core group of Trump lackeys attempting to subvert the results. She participated in Trump’s phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, wherein the president attempted to coerce the state official to “find” the extra 11,780 votes he needed to win the state. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is currently conducting a wide-ranging probe into that call, examining whether Trump and the other participants broke state laws. A special grand jury was impaneled in early May.
Mitchell has also been subpoenaed by the House panel probing the January 6 insurrection, as she was in contact with Trump that day. In response, Mitchell filed a lawsuit to block the subpoena. When reports of her role on Trump’s call with Raffensperger quickly surfaced in 2021, Mitchell resigned from her two-decade career with the law firm Foley & Lardner—as it was conducting an internal review—and joined CPItwo months later. (Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)
“Cleta Mitchell allied herself with Trump’s election conspiracy theories on the infamous Trump-Raffensperger call,” Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, said, adding acidly: “If that makes one an advocate for election integrity, Charles Ponzi was a champion of investment integrity.”
:{
In loose alliance with other conservative groups such as Heritage Action, Tea Party Patriots, and FreedomWorks—where she was tapped in March 2021 to lead a “National Election Protection Initiative” with a multimillion-dollar budget—Mitchell and CPI have worked with gusto to tighten voting laws: That campaign helped spur at least 19 states in 2021 to pass more stringent voting measures, including voter identification mandates and curbs on absentee ballots, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.}:
Mitchell’s cachet among the right’s big donors is considerable: She sits on the board of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years to conservative election integrity and legal groups, including the Public Interest Legal Foundation, where Mitchell chairs the board. To help Trump overturn his loss in Arizona, Mitchell raised about $1 million in funds for a partisan audit of the state’s largest county—which wound up backfiring when the audit confirmed Trump’s loss there.
The programming at the CPI summits this year has partly overlapped, and included participants from an RNC election integrity drive that has recruited directors in 18 states and thousands of poll watchers, as The New York Times revealed in late May. To tutor activists at the summits about how to create local and state task forces, Mitchell and CPI have distributed a 19-page manual dubbed “The Citizens Guide to Building an Election Integrity Infrastructure.” The manual suggests some traditional poll monitor methods, but takes an ominous tone, urging activists to follow “every step” of vote-by-mail operations and advising them to “be ever-present” inside election offices.
:{
AMAC Action, a conservative grassroots arm of the Association of Mature American Citizens that boasts over two million members, has co-sponsored several CPI summits. “We don’t want to see the kinds of shenanigans in 2020” again, Bob Carlstrom, AMAC Action’s president, told me. Carlstrom, a veteran D.C. lobbyist who expected to attend his first summit in North Carolina in June, added thatAMAC Action has encouraged its volunteers to be poll workers, election officials, and poll watchers. His group also has “been quite active in working on legislation” in Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania, and other states where CPI and allied groups have spent millions promoting new laws that have curbed voting rights.}:
Such multifaceted conservative efforts by Mitchell and CPI have prompted concern from election watchdogs worried about the false narrative of major fraud leading to voter suppression and intimidation targeting Black and other minority voters. “These lies are then used to justify restrictive policies that make it harder for people to vote, particularly in communities of color,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. He added, “It is also important to remind voters that there are laws prohibiting the intimidation of voters and election officials. We cannot let the threat of intimidation alone prevent anyone from participating in our democracy.”
According to Mitchell’s blog and radio interviews she’s done this year—including an April one with Trump uber loyalist Steve Bannon—the CPI summits are building a state-based “movement.” Mitchell now hosts a podcast, dubbed Who’s Counting, where she speaks with like-minded conservative activists in states such as Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The podcasts tend to hype allegations of improper voting and election practices. Mitchell bluntly told Jane Mayer of The New Yorker last year that the goal of her post-2020 work has been “to make it harder to cheat,” without a nod to former Attorney General William Barr’s acknowledgment in late 2020 that there was no significant fraud in Biden’s win by over seven million votes nationally.
Since the first meeting in 2021, the summits have drawn several conservative and political bigwigs, including Tea Party Patriots leader Jenny Beth Martin and CPI chair DeMint. Meadows was a keynote speaker at a CPI summit in Georgia, but his public role has diminished following the disclosure in March that North Carolina was investigating whether he committed voter fraud. The inquiry was prompted by a New Yorker report that in 2020 Meadows registered to vote using an address where he’d never lived—a potential rare instance of actual voter fraud. Shortly before the probe became public, Meadows quietly dropped out of CPI’s Phoenix summit, where he was supposed to be a keynote speaker, and he does not appear to have been at any other public CPI events.
The “election integrity” agenda advanced by CPI and Mitchell has set off alarm bells for Democratic SenatorSheldon Whitehouse. “From Cleta Mitchell’s dark-money group to Heritage Action, we see dark money crawling everywhere behind voter suppression and election subversion,” Whitehouse told me.
Looking ahead, the Brennan Center’s Morales-Doyle is worried that the summits could “increase the risk that vigilante actors will engage in intimidation and harassment of voters and election workers. In short, the people promoting these lies about so-called election integrity are doing serious harm to our democracy.”
Peter Stone is a Washington-based investigative journalist who has covered a wide array of lobbying, legal, and campaign finance issues, working for National Journal, McClatchy newspapers, and Legal Times, among other publications. As a freelancer, his work has also appeared in The Guardian, The New York Review of Books Daily, Mother Jones, The Intercept, and many other news outlets. He is the author of Heist: Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, His Republican Allies and the Buying of Washington.
Read More: Magazine, July-August 2022, State Of The Nation, Politics, The Soapbox, Midterm Elections, Republican Party, Donald Trump, Arizona, Georgia
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/06/the-glue-that-connects-jeffrey-clark-john-eastman-ginni-thomas-and-the-guy-who-was-air-dropped-into-the-doj-is-charles-kochs-money/
in September 1999 the U.S. Department of Justice filed racketeering charges against the major tobacco companies and two of their front groups. The court filings in that case carefully pieced together a half century of conspiratorial conduct and lies that gravely harmed the health of the American people, while lining the pockets of the tobacco industry, its lawyers and its paid shills.
The January 6 Select House Committee has that same, once-in-a-lifetime power in its hands. But that window of opportunity will close soon. The January 6 Committee can connect all the dots of the attempted coup leading to the doorstep of Charles Koch and expose his four decades of establishing front groups to shill for the fossil fuels industry and anti-climate change groups, or it can present a false and narrow view that this was all about the ego and narcissism of Donald Trump.
Charles Koch is the Chairman and CEO of one of the largest private companies in the world, Koch Industries, a fossil fuels and chemicals conglomerate that has been a serial polluter of the air and water for decades. According to Forbes, Koch has a net worth of $59.8 billion, making him the 17th richest man in the world. Charles Koch, and his late brother, David, functioned as backroom party bosses, behind the veil of a sprawling network of tax-exempt front groups, for 40 years.
Wall Street On Paradehas already produced the evidence tying the groups involved in the planning of the January 6 event to Charles Koch. See our report: The Money Trail to the Siege at the Capitol Leads to Charles Koch and Koch Industries.
We have already written about how the Trump administration was staffed up with Koch-related people and took its marching orders from a Koch-related entity, Freedom Partners.
There is also documented evidence that the Koch network engaged in a multi-faceted strategy to discourage progressives and liberals from turning out in the 2016 presidential election, thus tipping the victory to Trump. Not only did the Koch network fund Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners Action Fund ads portraying Democrats as tax and spend bureaucrats but the Koch-controlled i360 voter database and voter-targeting operations may have demoralized the progressive base from turning out while those same operations spurred Republicans to the polls.
And, today, we will show how key collaborators in the attempted coup on January 6 – Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Ginni Thomas, Cleta Mitchell, and Kenneth Klukowski – the attorney who was air-dropped into the U.S. Department of Justice just 35 days before the end of Trump’s term – all have ties to front groups funded by Charles Koch or his related nonprofits.
Let’s start withJeffrey Clark, the environmental lawyer at the Department of Justice with no criminal experience that Trump wanted to name U.S. Attorney General because he was willing to go all-in with the attempted coup. After the failed coup, Clark was out of a job at the Department of Justice. He was, in short order, named Chief of Litigation and Director of Strategy at a group called the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA). That’s a curious hire for someone likely facing a long criminal investigation and possible conviction.
NCLA has received millions of dollars from Charles Koch related entities. The Charles G. Koch Foundation gave NCLA $1 million in 2017, $1 million again in 2018, and $1 million again in 2019 for “general operating support,” according to its publicly-available 990 tax filings with the IRS. The Charles Koch Institute gave NCLA $1 million in 2020. Donors Trust, a dark money nonprofit with Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over it, gave NCLA more than $2 million from 2018 through 2020, according to its 990 filings.
In addition to needing a job after the failed coup attempt, Jeffrey Clark needed a plugged-in attorney. Somehow, he found his way to Harry MacDougald, a Managing Partner at Caldwell, Carlson, Elliott & DeLoach. The fossil fuels industry watchdog, DeSmog, describes MacDougald as follows:
“MacDougald was part of the legal team that worked with the Southeastern Legal Foundation to challenge the EPA‘s endangerment finding on greenhouse gases.In its lawsuit against the EPA, Southeastern Legal identified its allies in the effort as ‘like-minded organizations’ including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and the Independent Women’s Forum, among others.”
DeSmog notes that MacDougald spoke at the Heartland Institute’s “America First Energy Conference” in New Orleans in 2018. The Heartland Institute is a climate science denier that has received more than $26 million from two Koch-related groups, Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust, according to the Conservative Transparency Project using publicly available 990 IRS tax filings. The conference was promoted as follows:
“The purpose of this event is to promote and expand energy freedom in the United States, as outlined in President Donald Trump’s bold America First Energy Plan, a proposal first released during the 2016 presidential campaign. The president’s plan marks a decisive change in direction from the Obama administration’s ‘war on fossil fuels’…”
Two of the allied groups mentioned above, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, have long histories with Koch money.Charles Koch and his late brother, David, were actually secret owners of the Cato Institute for decades. Greenpeace has called the Heritage Foundation “Koch Industries’ Climate Denial Front Group” and reports that it has received $6,130,201 from Koch foundations from 1997 through 2017.
Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was firing off all of those emails to Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, to press for the attempted coup, had previously received $1,051,214 in compensation from the Heritage Foundationover a number of years. Clarence Thomas failed to report that compensation on his financial disclosure forms at the Supreme Court, even though he was required to do so.
The ties between Ginni Thomas and another attempted coup collaborator, Cleta Mitchell, run deep – with all roads leading to Koch money. As we reported in March:
In the emails that Ginni Thomas sent to Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, one of the people that she told Meadows to listen to was attorney Cleta Mitchell – a woman who has both a longstanding association with Ginni Thomas as well as with Koch front groups. Trump’s phone log for January 6 shows that Cleta Mitchell was one of the people that Trump spoke with at 7 :53 p.m. on the evening of the attack on the Capitol.
Cleta Mitchell has been in the news previously as the lawyer who was on the January 2, 2021 call with Donald Trump when he phoned the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, and told him: “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” That call took place two months after the presidential election. (Mitchell stepped down from her long-term employment at law firm Foley & Lardner after her presence on that call was made public.)
Cleta Mitchell is also the attorney who filed an amicus brief in the Citizens United case before the Supreme Court that was decided on January 21, 2010. That case would be the tipping point to allow unlimited sums from corporations – like Koch Industries — in U.S. elections.
Just eight days after Justice Thomas voted in favor of that decision to open the floodgates to corporate money in campaigns, Cleta Mitchell made a move that looked very much like a quid pro quo to Ginni Thomas.Mitchell, then still a partner at Foley & Lardner, filed an application with the Internal Revenue Service to set up a nonprofit called Liberty Central, Inc. on behalf of Ginni Thomas. According to IRS tax filings, Liberty Central received a combined $1.478 million from dark money donors in 2009 and 2010.
On the IRS tax filings for Liberty Central for 2009 and 2010, Ginni (Virginia) Thomas is listed as President and CEO. The 2010 tax filing shows that Ginni Thomas received $120,511 in compensation from Liberty Central that year. She eventually stepped down from an official post at the nonprofit, stating she would serve as a consultant.
Liberty Centralhad the fingerprints of Charles Koch all over it. Acting as General Counsel in 2010 for Liberty Central was a former lawyer for the Charles G. Koch Foundation, Sarah Field. A former Koch lobbyist, Matt Schlapp, served on the Board of Liberty Central at inception.
Mitchell’s law firm, Foley & Lardner, employed three attorneys working as lobbyists for a Koch Industries affiliate, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011. The Koch-related lobbyists were Ray Carey, Jason Childress and Kathleen Walby.
Mitchell was a former lobbyist at the federal level in years 2005 through 2008 for the Alliance for Charitable Reform, a project of The Philanthropy Roundtable, another tax-exempt organization. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two dark money groups which also have Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over them, were spun off from the Philanthropy Roundtable in 1999. (See our report: Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.)
The financial disclosure forms filed by Clarence Thomas show that from 2011 through 2017, Ginni Thomas received a “salary” from the Daily Caller, a right-wing spin organization founded in 2010 by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and former Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel. Its creation was announced at a gathering at the Heritage Foundation. The Daily Caller’s affiliated News Foundation has received funding from the Koch Family Foundations and the Charles Koch Institute.
Despite the previous scandal over Clarence Thomas failing to report that Ginni Thomas had received income from the Heritage Foundation, there are no dollar ranges listed on his financial disclosure forms to show the range of “salary” Ginni Thomas actually received from the Daily Caller from 2011 to 2017.
From 2011 through 2020, Clarence Thomas shows that his wife was receiving “salary and benefits” from Liberty Consulting. But again, there is no range of salary and benefits shown. Instead, Liberty Consulting is listed under “Investments” and shows a “book value” of $100,000 to $250,000 in 2019, which then drops to $15,000 to $50,000 in 2020.
Then there isKen Klukowski, the man air-dropped into the Department of Justice just 35 days before Trump’s term ended to work at the elbow of Jeffrey Clark. The Select Committee believes that Klukowski may have been involved in drafting the proposed letter to state officials which falsely claimed that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote totals in those states and the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump.”
Klukowski had been a writer at the right-wing outlet, Breitbart, which was formerly led by former Trump White House advisor, Steve Bannon. Bannon was the long-tenured filmmaker for Citizens United, the nonprofit involved in the history-making case at the U.S. Supreme Court that opened the floodgates to corporate money in campaigns. Bannon made right-wing propaganda documentaries for Citizens United like “Fire from the Heartland,” a glowing tribute to Michele Bachmann; “The Undefeated,” profiling the rise of Sarah Palinto national prominence and the darling of the Tea Party movement; “Generation Zero,” blaming the 2008 financial crash on liberals instead of the Wall Street bank executives who presided over the unprecedented frauds; and 
,” demonizing the young people attempting to remove their democracy from the iron grip of the one percent as sinister criminals.
Klukowski got his law degree from George Mason University, one of the largest and longest recipients of Koch money. In just the three most recent years that public 990 tax filings are available, they show that the Charles G. Koch Foundation gave a total of $46.89 million to George Mason University from 2017 through 2019.
In 2018, New York Times reporters Erica L. Green and Stephanie Saul wrote about how newly-released documents showed that Koch’s money came with strings attached at George Mason University:
“The documents reveal in surprising detail that for years, as George Mason grew from a little-known commuter school to a major public university and a center of libertarian scholarship, millions of dollars in donations from conservative-leaning donors like the Charles Koch Foundation had come with strings attached.
“As early as 1990, entities controlled by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch were given a seat on a committee to pick candidates for a professorship that they funded, the records show. Similar arrangements that continued through 2009 gave donors decision-making roles in selecting candidates for key economics appointments at the Mercatus Center,a Koch-funded think tank on campus that studies markets and regulation. The appointments, which also created faculty lines at George Mason, were steered to professors who, like the Kochs, embraced unconstrained free markets.”
And, finally, there is John Eastman, the Trump lawyer who ranted on the stage before the crowd at the Capitol on January 6 about widespread voter fraud in the election and, according to the Select Committee, played a key role in the attempted coup.
Both Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman are tied to the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Mitchell is the Chair of the Board and Eastman is a Director. The New York Times has reported that it was Mitchell who “enlisted John Eastman, the lawyer who crafted specious legal theories claiming Vice President Mike Pence could keep Mr. Trump in power.”
Eastman is also Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) according to its website, a group opposing same-sex marriage. Wall Street On Parade looked into that group in 2011. We found multiple ties to the Koch network’s pursuit of the Citizens United decision at the U.S. Supreme Court.
When Ginni Thomas filed her registration statement for her own tea party group, Liberty Central, Inc., with the state of West Virginia on December 31, 2009, she listed her accountant as Neil Corkery with an address of 8665 Sudley Road, Suite 182 in Manassas, Virginia. According to a UPS store employee located there, there was no other business located at this site; just post office boxes. When Ginni Thomas filed her first IRS 990 form for tax year 2009 for Liberty Central, she listed her tax preparer as Conlon and Associates LLC.
These same two names, Neil Corkery andConlon and Associates LLC,would end up on the 2009 tax filings of the National Organization for Marriage.
The IRS 2009 tax filing for the National Organization for Marriage, Inc. shows it took in $7.1 million and made five grants totaling $2,105,000. Stand for Marriage Maine received 93 percent of those funds, or $1,960,000. Stand for Marriage Maine waged the successful 2009 repeal of same-sex marriage in Maine, using the same tactics and, indeed, the same ad and marketing firm that was used in the California Proposition 8 battle.
Secret donors washing money through a 501(c)(4) tax exempt organization and then funneling it to a Political Action Committee in Maine brought a request for an investigation to the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices by Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate. The Commission initiated an investigation. Stepping forward to represent both the National Organization for Marriage and Stand for Marriage Maine PAC was the law firm Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom.
James Bopp of Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom is (wait for it) the lawyer who represented Citizens United in the lower courts and, hoping to gut campaign financing reform, maneuvered the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The law firm Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom is located in Terre Haute, Indiana. What is the statistical probability of it being sheer coincidence that an Indiana law firm is involved in a nonprofit advocacy group case in Maine involving secret donors; also involved in the Citizens United case before the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. involving secret donors; and the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas is using the same Neil Corkery and Conlon and Associates for her Tea Party nonprofit as Bopp’s anti same-sex marriage clients in the Maine case?
We strongly urge the January 6 Select Committee to provide the full, unvarnished truth to the American people.
1/6 hearing 6/21 tuescleta said she commissioned Eastman coup memo a day or 2 after (or before) election loss?
https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/guest-words/24209-the-money-trail-ginni-thomas-emails-to-overturn-biden-s-election-leads-to-charles-koch
2020 ELECTION CONSPIRACY - The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Bob Costa of CBS News have unleashed a fury of renewed interest in the work of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Last Thursday, Woodward and Costa set off a political firestorm when they released the contents of emails that Ginni Thomas, wife of the sitting Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, had sent to President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in 2020, urging him to overturn the Biden election win and attempting to steer his efforts in that regard.
A total of 29 emails were obtained by Woodward and Costa, with the bulk of the emails occurring in just the month of November 2020, raising questions as to how many more emails are still out there from Thomas to the White House from December 1, 2020 through January 20, 2021 when Biden was sworn in.
Much of the current news debate around the emails is focusing on whether Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from cases involving groups with which his wife is involved and whether the Select Committee should subpoena Ginni Thomas to testify. While those are certainly important issues, what has thus far been ignored is the smoking gun trail that leads directly to the doorstep of billionaire and right-wing Republican political mastermind, Charles Koch, the Chairman, CEO (and majority owner with the heirs of his deceased brother David) of the fossil fuels conglomerate Koch Industries.
Wall Street On Parade has previously documented that at least three of the front groups that fomented the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump and that actively solicited thousands of people to turn out for the January 6 event at the Capitol, were funded by Koch Industries or its front groups.
The smoking gun in the Ginni Thomas email thread occurs in an email dated November 10, 2020 when she tells Meadows to “Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta.” Thomas is clearly referring to conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, and lawyer, Cleta Mitchell.
Cleta Mitchell is best known in the Trump election saga as the lawyer who was on the January 2, 2021 call with Donald Trump when he phoned the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, and told him this: “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” That call took place two months after the presidential election. (Mitchell stepped down from her long-term employment at law firm Foley & Lardner after her presence on that call made the news cycle.)
But Cleta Mitchell’s relationship with Ginni Thomas dates back at least a decade earlier – and not in a good way.
Cleta Mitchell had filed an amicus briefin the Citizens Unitedcase before the Supreme Court that was decided on January 21, 2010. That case would be the tipping point to allow unlimited sums from corporations – like Koch Industries — in U.S. elections.
Just eight days after Justice Thomas voted in favor of that decision to open the floodgates to corporate money in campaigns, Cleta Mitchell made a move that looked very much like a quid pro quo to Ginni Thomas. Mitchell, then still a partner at Foley & Lardner, filed an application with the Internal Revenue Service to set up a nonprofit called Liberty Central, Inc.on behalf of Ginni Thomas. According to IRS tax filings, Liberty Central received a combined $1.478 million from dark money donors in 2009 and 2010.
On the IRS tax filings for Liberty Central for 2009 and 2010, Ginni (Virginia) Thomas is listed as President and CEO. The 2010 tax filing shows that Ginni Thomas received $120,511 in compensation from Liberty Central that year. She eventually stepped down from an official post at the nonprofit, stating she would serve as a consultant.
Liberty Central had the fingerprints of Charles Koch all over it. Acting as General Counsel in 2010 for Liberty Central was a former lawyer for the Charles G. Koch Foundation, Sarah Field. A former Koch lobbyist, Matt Schlapp, served on the Board of Liberty Central at inception.
Mitchell’s law firm, Foley & Lardner, employed three attorneys working as lobbyists for a Koch Industries affiliate, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011. The Koch-related lobbyists were Ray Carey, Jason Childress and Kathleen Walby.
Mitchell, herself, was a former lobbyist at the federal level in years 2005 through 2008 for the Alliance for Charitable Reform, a project of The Philanthropy Roundtable, another tax-exempt organization. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two dark money groups which also have Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over them, were spun off from the Philanthropy Roundtable in 1999. (See our report: Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.)
Mitchell is listed on the 2018 federal tax filing for SteveBannon’s charity, Citizens of the American Republic, as an officer of the organization, holding the position of Secretary. Bannon and others were charged in August of 2021 by the Department of Justice with bilking donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through that charity.
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, was one of those pushing the narrative on television that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, lawyers and staff ofFoley & Lardner were the third largest donor to Johnson’s campaign committees since 2015. Employees and officials of Koch Industries ranked fifth.
There were only eight Republican Senators who refused to certify the votes for the challenged states of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania. Those Republican Senators were: Ted Cruz of Texas; Josh Hawley of Missouri; Rick Scott of Florida; Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; Roger Marshall of Kansas; Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi; John Kennedy of Louisiana; and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. Every Republican Senator who refused to certify the election results on January 6 received funding from Koch Industries PAC.
Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, whom Ginni Thomas enlisted in the White House to help overturn Biden’s election win, was previously a member of the House of Representatives from North Carolina from 2013 to 2020. He also received campaign funding from the Koch Industries PAC throughout his time in Congress.
Charles Koch is usually very careful in keeping an arm’s length relationship between himself and his political operations. But on at least one occasion Koch conducted a dinner meeting directly with sitting Justice Clarence Thomas at a private club in California.
In January 2008, Justice Thomas attended an all-expenses-paid, four-day trip to the Koch brothers’ semi-annual political gathering in the Palm Springs area of California. (According to his 2008 disclosure form and the Supreme Court’s public information office, Thomas’ expenses for that trip were paid by the Federalist Society, a conservative nonprofit that Koch foundations have generously supported.)
Justice Thomas’ trip to the Koch event occurred in the same year that the Citizens United case was accepted by the Supreme Court. The Court accepts less than two percent of all cases appealed to it.
Wall Street On Parade was previously able to confirm with Scott Markley, Public Information Specialist at the Supreme Court, that during that January 2008 visit to the Koch political gathering, Justice Thomas was hosted by Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, at the private Vintage Club where Charles Koch is a member.
The Citizens United decision did not pass the smell test when it was approved in a 5-4 vote by the Supreme Court. Four of the nine justices wrote a scathing dissent that raised the issue of unprincipled behavior, writing that the majority had ruled on issues that were not even legally before the court.
The money that the Koch political machine pumped into putting Trump in the Oval Office quickly paid big dividends in his first term (and made it clear as to why Charles Koch would have wanted to see a second Trump term).
Koch Industries’ law firm, Jones Day, sent 12 of its law partners to staff up key positions in the Trump administration on the very day Trump was inaugurated. Jones Day has since sacked the press release it issued at the time but you can read the reporting on it at the American Bar Association Journal.
Once Trump was settled in the Oval Office, a Koch front group, then known as Freedom Partners, mapped out the agenda it expected Trump to march to. In a document titled “Roadmap to Repeal: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Opportunity,” the group listed the laws and regulations it expected to be repealed in the first 100 days of Trump’s administration. The Trump administration dutifully marched to the beat. Repeal the Paris Climate Accord – done. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy – done. Gutting federal regulations and the Environmental Protection Agency – done.
By the spring of 2018, 12 people who previously worked at Freedom Partners were working in the Trump administration. Freedom Partners has since disbanded but when we last took a look at the nonprofit in July 2018, we found that all but one of Freedom Partners’ 9-member Board of Directors was a current or former Koch company employee. The Board Chair of Freedom Partners at that time was the same Mark Holden that was the General Counsel of Koch Industries.
It’s time for the House Select Committee to subpoena not just Ginni Thomas and Cleta Mitchell. It’s time to hear from Charles Koch directly on how so much money bearing his fingerprints ended up fomenting the attack on the Capitol on January 6.
There will never be a better time than now for the American people to finally get at the truth.
(Pam Martens & Russ Martens are authors at CounterPunch.org. This originally appeared on Wall Street on Parade.)
ref 1/20/21
Money Trail to the Siege at the Capitol Leads to Charles Koch and Koch Industries
the FBI has asked the public for help in collecting evidence surrounding the siege at the Capitol on January 6 — an insurrection that left five people dead, dozens injured, and Congressional members’ offices ransacked and laptops stolen. The violent scenes at the Capitol played out live on TV, humiliating the United States around the world. The world will watch President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration today, surrounded by 25,000 National Guard Troops in Washington, D.C. These images will further undermine the standing of the United States among world leaders.
Because the FBI seems to have ignored for decades the serial warning signs regarding Charles Koch, Koch Industries and their intrusions into elections, we’re providing the FBI a simple and clear roadmap today.
Charles Koch is the billionaire Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world. Koch Industries is a conglomerate with interests in fossil fuels, refineries, chemicals, paper products and extensive trading operations. For the past forty years, Charles Koch has been involved in a stealthy network of front groups that seek to gut the federal government of its regulatory functions and kill off popular federal programs like the U.S. Post Office, Social Security and Medicare.
To understand the full scope of Koch’s involvement in the events of January 6, let’s first remember what actually fomented the attack on the Capitol. It was based on the Big Lie that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump through voter fraud — something that Trump’s own cyber security chief, Chris Krebs, and Attorney General, William Barr, dismissed as lacking a factual basis. The playbook for the Capitol attack on January 6 was to intimidate Republican members of the Senate and House into refusing to certify the election results, thus withholding the Presidency from Joe Biden.
These are the red flags that lead to the doorstep of Charles Koch and Koch Industries and should play a significant role in any serious investigation conducted by Congress, the FBI, or U.S. intelligence agencies.
Red Flag # 1: There were only eight Republican Senators who refused to certify the votes for the challenged states of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania. (All Democrats voted to certify all states.) Those Republican Senators are: Ted Cruz of Texas; Josh Hawley of Missouri; Rick Scott of Florida; Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; Roger Marshall of Kansas; Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi; John Kennedy of Louisiana; and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.
Every Republican Senator who refused to certify the election results on January 6 received funding from Koch Industries PAC.
On January 2, ten Senators joined with Senator Ted Cruz to announce that they planned to “vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ ” until an emergency audit was commissioned. Six of those Senators backed down from challenging the certification after the attack on the Capitol occurred. Those six Senators were: Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; James Lankford of Oklahoma; Steve Daines of Montana; Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee; Mike Braud of Indiana; and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. All six of these Senators have also been on the receiving end of campaign largesse from the Koch Industries PAC and/or Koch family members.
The money to these 14 Senators from Koch-related entities has been documented by Alex Kotch and David Armiak in a January 5 report at the Center for Media and Democracy. Kotch and Armiak also note that Koch-funded Super PACs boosted the election chances for Blackburn, Daines, Hawley and Marshall, writing that Americans for Prosperity Action has “spent $11.9 million” to promote those candidates.
The authors also note that the Koch-backed Freedom Partners Action Fund, “dropped nearly $3 million into the Wisconsin Senate race to support Johnson and attack his liberal opponent, Russ Feingold.”
Wall Street On Parade also looked at data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics based on Federal Election Commission records. We found that since 2012 Koch Industries has ranked between the second to six largest donor to Ron Johnson in every fundraising cycle. The Center’s data also shows that Koch Industries was the number one donor to Senator Lankford in the current 2019-2020 cycle. (The money comes from the Koch PAC, employees or family members of employees of Koch Industries, not the corporation itself.)
Red Flag # 2:At least three of the “nonprofit” groups that fomented the Big Lie that the election had been stolen and actively solicited thousands of people to turn out for the January 6 event were funded by Koch Industries or its front groups.
According to the TrumpMarch.com website, which was sponsored by Women for America First, its “Coalition Partners” for the January 6 event at the Capitol included the Rule of Law Defense Fund; the Tea Party Patriots; and Turning Point Action, among others. The TrumpMarch.com website has since been taken down but it was captured on January 2, 2021 (give it a little time to load) by the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine.
Rule of Law Defense Fund is the dark money arm of Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a group that is raising millions of dollars from corporate felons in order to elect the highest law enforcement officers at the state level. (See our in-depth report of January 14, 2021.) According to IRS filings made by RAGA, it has received $511,400 from Koch Industries and a subsidiary since 2014.
A division of Koch Industries, i360, has a massive voter database that some suggest is far more sophisticated than that of the Republican National Committee.The database includes phone numbers of people likely to turn out for an event of this nature. Its program, Predictive Dialer, says it can “scale call volume quickly so you aren’t let down as you ramp up your campaigns, from hundreds of outbound calls per hour to more than 100,000.” The Congressional Committees that are investigating the attack at the Capitol need to ascertain if Koch’s i360 services were used to make robo calls for the event.
As originally reported by Jamie Corey at the watchdog group, Documented, the dark money arm of RAGA made robo calls to boost turnout for the January 6 event at the Capitol. The message was as follows:
“I’m calling for the Rule of Law Defense Fund with an important message. The ‘March to Save America’ is tomorrow in Washington D.C. at the Ellipse in President’s Park between E St. and Constitution Avenue on the south side of the White House, with doors opening at 7:00 a.m. At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on congress to stop the steal. We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections. For more information, visit MarchtoSaveAmerica.com. This call is paid for and authorized by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, 202-796-5838.”
Another of the Coalition Partners, Turning Point Action, Tweeted that it was “honored to help make this happen, sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” The Tweet was first reported by DailyDot.com.
Turning Point Action is a dark money group that does not report its donors to the Federal Election Commission. However, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, its sister group, Turning Point USA, has received $610,000 from Donors Trust since 2017. (We should note that the IRS has not posted the 990 tax filings as yet for Donors Trust’s tax years of 2019 and 2020 so it is quite possible that the cash haul is far greater than $610,000.)
Charles Koch’s footprints are all over Donors Trust, another dark money group, as we exclusively reported in 2010. (See Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.) We wrote at the time:
“There are shades of Charles Koch all over Donors Capital and Donors Trust. Two grantees receiving repeat and sizeable grants from Donors Capital are favorites of the Koch foundations: George Mason University Foundation and Institute for Humane Studies. Another tie is Claire Kittle. A project of Donor’s Trust isTalent Market.org, a headhunter for staffing nonprofits with the ‘right’ people. Ms. Kittle serves as Talent Market’s Executive Director and was the former Program Officer for Leadership and Talent Development at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Then there is Whitney Ball, President of both Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust. Ms. Ball [now deceased] was one of the elite guests at the invitation-only secret Aspen bash thrown by Charles Koch in June of this year,as reported by ThinkProgress.org. Also on the guest list for the Koch bash was Stephen Moore, a member of the Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Moore is a Director at Donors Capital Fund. Rounding out the ties that bind is Lauren Vander Heyden, who serves as Client Services Coordinator at Donors Trust. Ms. Vander Heyden previously worked as grants coordinator and policy analyst at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.”
According to the April 1, 2020 report at the Center for Media and Democracy, “In 2014-15, the Koch’s Knowledge and Progress Fund gave $5.3 million to Donors Trust, and the Charles Koch Foundation has given $980,000 to it since 2014. The connected Donors Capital Fund, to which Koch family foundations have also contributed large sums, donated $100,000 to TPUSA [Turning Point USA] in 2016.”
Another Coalition Partner for the January 6 event, Tea Party Patriots, has received at least $200,000 from Freedom Partners, a Koch front group. Tea Party Patriots has also received donations from Donors Trust.
We are unable to report if Women for America First, which obtained the permit for the speeches and rally that preceded the march on the Capitol, has ties to Koch funding because it is such a new group that it has yet to file an IRS 990 form. However, its Chair, Amy Kremer, held previous positions in two tea party groups. The tea party movement was a Koch Industries and Big Tobacco creation, as insider Jeff Nesbit explains in his book, :{Poison Tea: How Big Oil and Big Tobacco Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP:(style="background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"):}:.
Red Flag # 3: Charles Koch and Koch Industries were heavily vested in wanting to ensure that Donald Trump had another four-years as President.
One of the Koch front groups that played a major role in the 2016 election was Freedom Partners, which closed up shop in 2019. It was hard to tell where Freedom Partners begins and Koch Industries ends. When the group was still active in 2018, we took a look at its Board of Directors. We found that all but one of its Board Members was a current or former Koch company employee. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, Freedom Partners ended up with 12 of its former employees working in the Trump Administration.
Freedom Partners Action Fund,a related organization that ran attack ads against Democrats, had received at least $14 million from Charles Koch and his trust before it shuttered its operations.
Freedom Partners laid down their marching orders for the Trump administration in a formal memo and their handmaidens in the Trump administration delivered: from the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord to the massive tax cut for corporations and one percenters to the gutting of federal regulations and putting industry lobbyists in charge of federal agencies.
But that was just the beginning. Koch Industries law firm, Jones Day, sent 12 of its law partners to staff up key positions in the Trump administration on the very day Trump was inaugurated. Jones Day has since removed the press release it issued at the time but you can read the reporting on it at the American Bar Association Journal. Wall Street On Parade also reported on it at the time, finding it unusual that the Trump transition team would give so many key slots to Jones Day when its partners had supported Hillary Clinton for President. This is another matter worthy of Congressional and FBI investigation.
Red Flag # 4: Koch Industries, through its ownership of i360, was deeply entangled in the campaigns of members of Congress who voted against certifying the votes for Joe Biden. (What kind of intelligence agencies and FBI would allow a private fossil fuels conglomerate like Koch Industries to directly run campaign activities for federal candidates for Congress?) We broke the news in 2018 that Koch Industries had purchased i360. We obtained that information from an internal newsletter at Koch that was available online and from the fact that help-wanted ads for i360 sent applicants to apply at Koch Industries. (The company hasn’t denied our reporting over the past two years.)
We reported this at the time:
“The i360 website says that its database now has information on 199 million voters from all 50 states; information on 290 million consumers with 700+ data points; information on precinct election returns as well as data from the Census, NOAA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and geo-spatial data; individual sentiment information on candidates and issues from its social media operations; and information from its grassroots groups (read Americans for Prosperity) and paid door-to-door knockers who are using a sophisticated hand-held device to update the database in real time in the pivotal weeks before an election.
“But i360 is far more than just a voter database. It has social media targeting operations and really scary data collection that reaches into people’s homes. Consider this from their website:
‘Through an exclusive partnership with D2 Media Sales, the strategic relationship between DirectTV and Dish, i360 is able to identify households that meet your target criteria and serve ads uniquely to those households – no matter which stations or programs they are watching. With dozens of i360 custom segments pre-matched to more than 20 million DIRECTV and DISH homes, campaigns can now reach the largest addressable TV advertising platform in the nation. One-to-one television targeting combines the emotional impact of TV advertising with the precision and accuracy of direct mail marketing – resulting in the most cost-effective and high impact buying solutions.”
According to Federal Election Commission records, a number of Republican House Reps who objected to the certification of Biden’s win utilized the services of i360. For example, Mike Johnson of Louisiana paid i360 $15,580 for what he called “electronic media expense.” Elise Stefanik of New York paid i360 more than $128,000 which she tagged as telephone service, web service, equipment rental, or simply “subscription.” Barry Moore of Alabama paid i360 $12,815 in 2020 for fundraising mailouts and ad buys.
Senator Tommy Tuberville, who objected to the certification of Biden’s win, also engaged the services of i360 in 2020. Tuberville paid i360 $50,875 for data subscriptions and making phone calls. As the Capitol was under siege and Trump was watching these scenes on TV, he spoke with the newly-sworn in Senator Tuberville by phone, urging Tuberville to make more objections to the certification of the vote, according to reporting at CNN.At around 7 p.m., Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, made a second call to Tuberville. The call went to voice mail. Giuliani left this message for Tuberville, according to CNN, based on a report from The Dispatch:
“Sen. Tuberville? Or I should say Coach Tuberville. This is Rudy Giuliani, the President’s lawyer. I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you. I know they’re reconvening at 8 tonight, but it … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow — ideally until the end of tomorrow…”
The nagging question, of course, is what Trump and Giuliani had planned for “tomorrow.”
===
from chis adams pilf:
Two other Public Interest Legal Foundation lawyers—its president, J. Christian Adams,and another board member, Hans von Spakovsky—served in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, where they began efforts to use the Voting Rights Act, which was designed to protect Black voters, to prosecute purported fraud by Black voters and election officials. Both men have argued strenuously that American elections are rife withserious fraud, and in 2017 they got a rare opportunity to make their case, when Trump appointed them to a Presidential commission on election integrity. Within months, after the commission was unable to find significant evidenceof election fraud, it acrimoniously disbanded. Adams and von Spakovsky, who are members of what Roll Call has termed the Voter Fraud Brain Trust, have nevertheless continued their crusade, sustained partly by Bradley funds. Von Spakovsky now heads the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, which has received grants from the Bradley Foundation.
At Heritage, von Spakovsky has overseen a national tracking system monitoring election-fraud cases. But its data on Arizona, the putative center of the storm, is not exactly alarming: of the millions of votes cast in the state from 2016 to 2020, only nine individuals were convicted of fraud. Each instance involved someone casting a duplicate ballot in another state. There were no recorded cases of identity fraud, ballot stuffing, voting by non-citizens, or other nefarious schemes. The numbers confirm that there is some voter fraud, or at least confusion, but not remotely enough to affect election outcomes.
Even Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer who for years led the Party’s election-law fights, recently conceded to the Times that “a party that’s increasingly old and white whose base is a diminishing share of the population is conjuring up charges of fraud to erect barriers to voting for people it fears won’t support its candidates.”
The Voter Fraud Brain Trust lent support to Trump’s lies from the time he took office. In 2016, when he lost the popular vote by nearly three million ballots, he insisted that he had actually won it, spuriously blaming rampant fraud in California. Soon afterward, von Spakovsky gave Trump’s false claim credence by publishing an essay at Heritage arguing that there was no way to disprove the allegation, because “we have an election system that’s based on the honor system.”
More than a year before the 2020 election, Cleta Mitchell and her allies sensed political peril for Trump and began reviewing strategies to help keep him in office. According to a leaked video of an address that she gave in May, 2019, to the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative society, she warned that Democrats were successfully registering what she sarcastically referred to as “the disenfranchised.” She continued, “They know that if they target certain communities and they can get them registered and get them to the polls, then those groups . . . will vote ninety per cent, ninety-five per cent for Democrats.”
One possible countermove was for conservative state legislators to reëngineer the way the Electoral College has worked for more than a hundred years, in essence by invoking the Independent Legislature Doctrine. The Constitution gives states the authority to choose their Presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Since the late nineteenth century, states have delegated that authority to the popular vote. But, arguably, the Constitution permits state legislatures to take this authority back. Legislators could argue that an election had been compromised by irregularities or fraud, forcing them to intervene.
In August, 2019, e-mails show, Mitchell co-chaired a high-level working group with Shawnna Bolick, a Republican state representative from Phoenix. Among the topics slated for discussion was the Electoral College. The working group was convened by alec, the corporate-backed nonprofit that transmits conservative policy ideas and legislation to state lawmakers. The Bradley Foundation has long supported alec, and Mitchell has worked closely with it, serving as its outside counsel until recently.
Mitchell and Bolick declined to answer questions about the working group’s focus, but it appears that Bolick’s participation was productive. After the election, she signed a resolution demanding that Congress block the certification of Biden’s victory and award Arizona’s electors to Trump. Then, early this year, Bolick introduced a bill proposing a radical reading of Article II of the Constitution, along the lines of theIndependent Legislature Doctrine. It would enable a majority of the Arizona legislature to override the popular vote if it found fault with the outcome, and dictate the state’s Electoral College votes itself—anytime up until Inauguration Day. Bolick has described her bill as just “a good, democratic check and balance,” but her measure was considered so extreme that it died in committee, despite Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. Yet, simply by putting forth the idea as legislation, she helped lend legitimacy to the audacious scheme that the Trump campaign desperately pursued in the final days before Biden’s Inauguration: to rely on Republican-led state legislatures to overturn Electoral College votes. Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, who served as an associate White House counsel under Obama, told me, “Institutions like the Heritage Foundation and alec are providing the grease to turn these attacks on democracy into law.”
Bolick has since announced her candidacy for secretary of state in Arizona. Her husband, Clint Bolick, is an Arizona Supreme Court justice and a leader in right-wing legal circles. Clarence Thomas, one of the three U.S. Supreme Court Justices who signed on to the concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore laying out the Independent Legislature Doctrine, is the godfather of one of Clint Bolick’s sons. If Shawnna Bolick wins her race, she will oversee future elections in the state. And, if the Supreme Court faces another case in which arguments about the Independent Legislature Doctrine come into play, there may now be enough conservative Justices to agree with Thomas that there are circumstances under which legislatures, not voters, could have the final word in American elections.
Months before the 2020 vote, Lisa Nelson, the C.E.O. of alec, also anticipated contesting the election results. That February, she told a private gathering of the Council for National Policy about a high-level review that her group had undertaken of ways to challenge “the validity” of the Presidential returns. A video of the proceedings was obtained by the investigative group Documented, and first reported by the Washington Spectator. In her speech, Nelson noted that she was working with Mitchell and von Spakovsky.
Although the law bars charitable organizations such as theCouncil for National Policyfrom engaging in electoral politics, Nelson unabashedly acknowledged, “Obviously, we all want President Trump to win, and win the national vote.” She went on, “But it’s very clear that, really, what it comes down to is the states, and the state legislators.” One plan, she said, was to urge conservative legislators to voice doubt to their respective secretaries of state, questioning the election’s outcome and asking, “What did happen that night?”
By August, 2020, when the Council for National Policy held another meeting, the pandemic had hurt Trump’s prospects, and talk within the membership about potential Democratic election fraud had reached a frenzy. At the meeting, Adams, the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s president,echoed Trump’s raging about mail-in ballots, describing them as “the No. 1 left-wing agenda.” He urged conservatives not to be deterred by criticism: “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist, and so forth.”
A younger member of the organization, Charlie Kirk—a founder of Turning Point USA, which promotes right-wing ideas on school campuses—injected a note of optimism. He suggested that the pandemic, by closing campuses, would likely suppress voting among college students, a left-leaning bloc. “Please keep the campuses closed,” he said, to cheers. “Like, it’s a great thing!”
Five months later, Turning Point Action, a “social welfare organization” run by Kirk’s group, was one of nearly a dozen groups behind Trump’s “March to Save America,” on January 6th. Shortly before the rally, Kirk tweeted that the groups he leads would send “80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” His tweet was deleted after the crowds assaulted the Capitol.
Turning Point, which has received small grants from the Bradley Foundation, is headquartered in Arizona, and it has played a significant role in the radicalization of the state, in part by amplifying fear and anger about voter fraud. Turning Point’s chief operating officer, Tyler Bowyer, is a member of the Republican National Committeeand a former chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party. Bowyer’s friend Jake Hoffman runs an Arizona-based digital-marketing company, Rally Forge, that has been Turning Point’s highest-compensated contractor.In the summer of 2020, Rally Forge helped Turning Point use social media to spread incendiary misinformationabout the coming elections.
In September, the Washington Post reported that Rally Forge, on behalf of Turning Point Action, had paid teen-agers to deceptively post thousands of copycat propaganda messages, much as Russia had done during the 2016 campaign. Adult leaders had instructed the teens to tweak the wording of their posts, to evade detection by technology companies. Some messages were posted under the teens’ accounts, but others were sent under assumed personae. Many posts claimed that mail-in ballots would “lead to fraud,” and that Democrats planned to steal the Presidency.
Turning Point Action denied that it ran a troll farm, arguing that the teen-age employees were genuine, but a study by the Internet Observatory at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center documented the scheme, along with other dubious practices by Rally Forge. In 2016, the company fabricated a politician—complete with a doctored photograph—to run as an Independent write-in candidate against Andy Biggs, a far-right Republican seeking an open congressional seat in Arizona. The ploy, evidently intended to siphon votes from Biggs’s Democratic opponent, didn’t go far, but it was hardly the company’s only scam. The Guardian has shown how Rally Forge also created a phony left-wing front group, America Progress Now, which promoted Green Party candidates online in 2018, apparently to hurt Democrats in several races.
In October, 2020, Rally Forge was banned from Facebook, and its president, Hoffman, was permanently suspended by Twitter. Undeterred, he ran as a pro-Trump Republican for the Arizona House—and won. Remarkably, the chamber’s Republican leadership then appointed him the vice-chair of the Committee on Government and Elections. Since getting elected, Hoffman has challenged the legitimacy of Biden’s victory, called for election audits, and, in coördination with the Heritage Foundation, used his position to propose numerous bills making it more difficult to vote.
This past spring, at a private gathering outside Tucson, Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action—the politically active arm of the Heritage Foundation—singled out Hoffman for praise. As a leaked video of her remarks revealed, she told supporters that, with the help of Hoffman and other state legislators, the nonprofit group was rewriting America’s election laws. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them, or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe,” Anderson explained. “We’ve got three bills done in Arizona!” She continued, “We’re moving four more through the state of Arizona right now . . . simple bills, all straight from the Heritage recommendations.” One of the bills, she noted, was “written and carried by Jake Hoffman,” whom she described as “a longtime friend of the Heritage Foundation.”
Hoffman’s bills have made the Heritage Foundation’s wish list a reality.Voting by mail has long been popular in Arizona, with as many as ninety per cent of voters doing so in 2020, but one of Hoffman’s bills made it a felony to send a mail-in ballot to residents who hadn’t requested one, unless they were on an official list of early voters. Another bill, which Hoffman supported, will, according to one estimate, push as many as two hundred thousand people off the state’s list of early voters. Opponents say that this legislation will disproportionately purge Latinos, who constitute twenty-four per cent of the state’s eligible voters. Another bill by Hoffman banned state election officials from accepting outside donations to help pay for any aspect of election administration, including voter registration. (One of the bill’s targets was Mark Zuckerberg, whose foundation helped county election officials in Arizona handle the pandemic.) In February, at a hearing of the Committee on Government and Elections, a witness from the Washington-based Capital Research Center—also funded by the Bradley Foundation—testified in support of Hoffman’s legislation. Athena Salman, the ranking Democrat, told me she was incensed that Hoffman—“a guy who paid teen-agers to lie”—was put on the election committee. “It’s the fox guarding the henhouse!” she said.
Anderson, of Heritage, declined to respond to questions about the group’s collaborations with Hoffman, instead sending a prepared statement: “After a year when voters’ trust in our elections plummeted, restoring that trust should be the top priority of legislators and governors nationwide. That’s why Heritage Action is deploying our established grassroots network for state advocacy for the first time ever. There is nothing more important than ensuring every American is confident their vote counts—and we will do whatever it takes to get there.”
Hoffman, who formerly served as a town-council member in Queen Creek, a deeply conservative part of Maricopa County, did not respond to requests for comment. Kristin Clark, a Democrat who mounted a write-in campaign against him after the news of his troll farm broke, called Hoffman an “unintelligent man who wants to be a big guy.” She told me, “The Republicans here have changed. They were conservative, but now they’ve sold out. It’s money that’s changed it. All these giant, corporate groups that are faceless—it’s outside money.” In her view, “Jake Hoffman is but a cog.”
The spark that ignited the Arizona audit was an amateur video, taken on Election Night, of an unidentified female voter outside a polling place in what Kristin Clark recognized as Hoffman’s district.The voter claimed that election workers had tried to sabotage her ballot by deliberately giving her a Sharpie that the electronic scanners couldn’t read. Her claim was false: the scanners could read Sharpie ink, and the ballots had been designed so that the flip side wouldn’t be affected if the ink bled through. Nevertheless, the video went viral.
Among the first to spread the Sharpiegate conspiracywas another one ofCharlie Kirk’s youth groups, Students for Trump. The next day, as Trump furiously insisted he had won an election that he ended up losing by roughly seven million votes, protesters staged angry rallies in Maricopa County, where ballots were still being counted. Adding an aura of legal credibility to the conspiracy theory, Adams, the Public Interest Legal Foundation president, immediately filed suit against Maricopa County, alleging that a Sharpie-using voter he represented had been disenfranchised. The case was soon dismissed, but not before Adams tweeted, “just filed to have our client’s right to #vote upheld. Her #Sharpie ballot was cancelled without cure.” Arizona’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican, investigated, and his office took only a day to conclude that the Sharpie story was nonsense. But, by then, many Trump supporters no longer trusted Arizona’s election results. Clark, the former Democratic challenger to Hoffman, told me that she watched in horror as “they took B.S. and made it real!”
A day after the election, the office of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, reported that, based on a routine, bipartisan hand recount of a sample of ballots, “no discrepancies were found” in Maricopa County. Within days, the mainstream media had called the election for Biden, based on late returns from Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. But Cleta Mitchell, who had been dispatched by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to help the Trump campaign in Georgia, told Fox News, “We’re already double-checking and finding dead people having voted.” As Georgia was ratifying its results with a recount, she tweeted that the tally was “fake!!!”
Meanwhile, on the conservative Web site Townhall, Hoffman demanded “a full audit of the vote count in swing states,” adding that the election was “far from over.” He claimed that there had been “countless violations of state election law, statistical anomalies and election irregularities in more than a half dozen states,” and argued that state legislatures should therefore have the final say. By December, he had joined his friend Bowyer and other members of the state’s Republican Party in filing suit against Arizona’s governor, calling for the state to set aside Arizona’s eleven electoral votes and allow the legislature to intervene.
At the same time, another version of the Independent Legislature Doctrine argument was being mounted in Pennsylvania, by the Honest Elections Project, the group tied to Leonard Leo, of the Federalist Society. Local Republicans had challenged a state-court ruling that adjusted voting procedures during the pandemic. The Honest Elections Project filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the Pennsylvania court had usurped the legislature’s authority to oversee elections. The effort didn’t succeed, but Richard Hasen, the election-law professor, regards such arguments as “powder kegs” that threaten American democracy. Leo didn’t respond to requests for comment, but Hasen believes that Leo is trying to preserve “minority rule” in elections in order to advance his agenda. Hasen told me, “Making it harder to vote helps them get more Republican victories, which helps them get more conservative judges and courts.”
In the case of Arizona, it took only a week for a federal district court to dismiss Hoffman and Bowyer’s suit, citing an absence of “relevant or reliable evidence.” The court admonished the plaintiffs that “gossip and innuendo” cannot “be the basis for upending Arizona’s 2020 General Election.” Hoffman and the other plaintiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the matter, but it waited to do so until March. In the meantime, election-fraud conspiracy theories in Arizona were growing out of control.
On November 12th, Biden was declared the winner in Maricopa County. Soon after, a Republican member of the county’s Board of Supervisors, Bill Gates, was picking up takeout food for his family when the board’s chairman—one of four Republicans on the five-person board—called to warn him to be careful going home. Ninety angry people had gathered outside the chairman’s house, and Gates’s place could be next. “We’d all been doxed,” Gates told me. He and his wife are the legal guardians of a teen-ager whose father, a Ugandan, was nearly killed by henchmen for Idi Amin. “It’s chilling to see the parallels,” Gates told me. “You’d never think there were any parallels to a strongman autocracy in Africa.” Gates considers himself a political-science nerd, but, he said, “I had no concept that we were heading where we were heading.”
Gates, who moved to Arizona as a teen-ager, was a latchkey kid whose idea of entertainment was watching C-span. He is forty-nine and describes himself as a “child of the Reagan Revolution” who started a Republican club in high school. He attended Drake University, in Iowa, partly so that he could witness the state’s Presidential caucuses. Winning a Truman Scholarship opened his way to Harvard Law School, where he joined theFederalist Society,the Harvard Law School Republican Club, and the Journal of Law and Public Policy. At Harvard, membership in all three was called the “conservative trifecta.” Gates can scarcely believe how the Republican Party and the conservative movement have changed in the years since.
no lnx
republican lawyer is key player in voter suppression drive across US
This article is more than 6 months old
Cleta Mitchell has emerged in a series of roles that many see as a Republican push on limiting voting rights
Cleta Mitchcell testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on 6 February 2014.
Cleta Mitchcell testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on 6 February 2014. Photograph: Pablo Martínez Monsiváis/AP
Peter Stone in Washington
Sun 25 Apr 2021 04.00 EDT
It was an abrupt end to two decades as a partner at legal giant Foley & Lardner for the influential and conservative election lawyer Cleta Mitchell.
Days after Mitchell participated in Donald Trump’s controversial 2 January phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state where the then president pressured him to “find” him more votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win, Mitchell resigned her post in the midst of an internal firm review and mounting criticism.
The Reverend Kenneth Pierce speaks on 13 April at a rally to end voter suppression at the capitol building in Lansing, Michigan. Texas has introduced more bills restricting voter access than any other state.
‘Shameless’: Texas Republicans lead the charge on voting clampdown
Read more
But Mitchell, a combative and top lawyer in the right’s drive to promote unproven charges of sizable voting fraud in 2020 and tighten future voting laws, was not idle for long. She has now emerged in a series of roles that have put her at the heart of what many see as a ferocious Republican push on limiting voting rights that now reaches across America.
Last month, Mitchell was tapped by the libertarian FreedomWorks to spearhead a $10m drive in seven key states including Georgia, Arizona and Michigan to change voting laws to curb potential but unproven election fraud, which many Democrats and legal experts view as aimed at limiting minority votes.
According to a FreedomWorks spokesman, another key part of Mitchell’s mission leading its “National Election Protection Initiative”, is to rally opposition to a House-passed bill that in part would expand voting rights nationally which its sponsors see as necessary to counter the conservative assaults on voting rights in many states.
Advertisement
Georgia last month enacted a law that makes voting tougher with new curbs on absentee ballots and on voters in heavily Democratic urban and suburban areas, sparking lawsuits from civil rights and liberal groups, plus a sharp attack from Biden.
FreedomWorks’ president, Adam Brandon, has hailed Mitchell as “an outspoken advocate and voice of reason for improved election laws, especially during the chaotic 2020 election cycle”, and dubbed her “our guide”, chairing its election initiative, which will also include training and deploying activists in the states to monitor election procedures.
Likewise, the Trump-allied Conservative Partnership Institute last month recruited Mitchell as a “senior fellow” with a similar mission. Mitchell told the AP she is working to “coordinate” conservative views on voting to bolster opposition to the House passed voting rights legislation that is pending in the Senate.
Mitchell’s FreedomWorks and CPI projects come even as a Georgia DA in Fulton county is looking into whether Trump and others broke laws in pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find enough votes to block Biden’s win. On that call, Mitchell claimed she had evidence of voting fraud, but officials with Raffensperger’s office disagreed and faulted her data.
Some voting rights lawyers say Mitchell could face scrutiny over her role in the call.
Donald Trump listens as Cleta Mitchell speaks at the White House on 18 August 2020.
Donald Trump listens as Cleta Mitchell speaks at the White House on 18 August 2020. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/EPA
Gerry Hebert, who spent over two decades as a senior attorney at the Justice Department’s voting rights section, said in an interview Trump’s actions and words constituted “election interference [and] violated both state law and federal law, and he should be held accountable”.
Mitchell “reportedly interjected multiple times during the call in which she tried to support Trump’s allegations of fraud”, he said. “Her role in that call may well be part of the investigation” by the Georgia DA. Hebert added the state bar to which Mitchell belongs “has a responsibility to determine if she committed any violation of the legal ethics rules in that state.
Reached by phone, Mitchell declined to comment on her work for the two conservative outfits, or the Georgia inquiry into Trump’s call and whether she might face scrutiny.
Historically, the 70-year-old Mitchell has done legal work for many key players on the right including the National Rifle Association where she previously was on the board. A former Democrat and member of the Oklahoma legislature, Mitchell in the 1990s switched parties and moved to DC, where she has given legal counsel to many GOP candidates, campaign committees and non-profits.
Mitchell’s new roles with FreedomWorks and CPI underscore the right’s goal of swaying future election results with more voting curbs. The conservative blitz to tighten voting laws in which Heritage Action for America is a key player too, is being fueled by tens of millions of dollars, coupled with allegations that Trump as well as Mitchell and conservative allies have spread about unproven widespread voter fraud in the last elections.
In post-election radio interviews, Mitchell has escalated her rhetoric charging that Raffensperger is a “pathological liar” and attacking some GOP leaders in Georgia as “morally bankrupt”, according to the watchdog group Documented.
In another radio segment, Mitchell said that last September she told Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, there was a “massive effort to steal the election”.
More recently, Mitchell told the AP that she and Trump have been in contact “fairly frequently”, but declined to provide details.
Meanwhile, other right leaning groups with which Mitchell has had good ties are engaged in campaigns that seem to overlap those of FreedomWorks and CPI to limit voting rights.
For example, Mitchell told the AP: “I’ve been working with state legislatures for several years to get them to pay attention to what I call the political process.”
To be sure, Mitchell prior to the election served as outside counsel and helped coordinate a major voting law initiative for the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), an influential group of conservative state legislators which promotes model bills for states. Alec has reportedly been increasingly active this year in pushing its ideas for changing voting laws.
Known as well connected in conservative big money circles, Mitchell also serves on the board of the deep pocketed Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, a top donor to many rightwing groups including Alec to which it gave $750,000 dollars in 2020, records show.
Further, Mitchell has attended meetings of the famously secretive Council for National Policy, an influential rightwing group that boasts top donors, evangelical leaders and prominent conservatives like FreedomWorks’ Brandon.
At a CNP national meeting in mid November one panel featured Mitchell, Christian Adams the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), and other lawyers discussing “Election results and legal battles: What now?”
Mitchell, who also chairs Pilf, which received $300,000 in 2020 from the Bradley foundation, has indicated it could get active in the legal battles over the new Georgia law.
To be sure, some conservatives voice doubts about Mitchell’s legal acumen. An ex senior NRA official who knows Mitchell quipped her views are on the “fringe of the fringe”.
And one prominent GOP voting rights lawyer said Mitchell “tells clients what they want to hear regardless of law or reality”. The lawyer predicted Mitchell “will get scrutiny, but probably won’t be charged” in the Georgia DA’s inquiry.
1021 an raw
On CNN Wednesday, reporter Sunlen Surfaty did a deep dive into Cleta Mitchell — a little-known pro-Trump lawyer who played a big part in trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"She is not a household name," said Surfaty. "But lawyer Cleta Mitchell is a leader in President Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Named multiple times in a newly released Senate Judiciary report for her role in the pressure campaign on the Department of Justice to investigate unfounded claims of election fraud."
Surfaty then documented the ways Mitchell pushed to have the 2020 election results overturned, including emailing then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about purported evidence she'd collected about election fraud in Georgia.
Mitchell was also heard on Trump's infamous January 2nd call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom he encouraged to "find" 12,000 votes needed to overtake President Joe Biden in the state.
"Her investment with Trump came as a surprise to many, including her law firm, and led to her swift departure," said Surfaty. "Mitchell was first pulled in 24 hours after election day as she recounts in a little noticed podcast viewed by CNN."
"I got a call from Mark Meadows," said Mitchell in the podcast. "I flew to Atlanta, and I — and thus began my involvement with the post-election."
Later, Mitchell was involved in the failed "audit" of votes in Arizona, which actually gave Biden a bigger lead over Trump than the official state count.
Watch the full report below:
COUP
"Trump allies with links to the 'Stop the Steal' movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ."
The report included a brief list of the Trump allies who have been accused of pressuring DOJ officials to do the former president's bidding. Those individuals also had ties to the former president's "Stop the Steal" movement and the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that followed Trump's rally on January 6.
They are:
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.): The report indicates that the Republican lawmaker spoke directly to Donoghue about baseless claims of election fraud in his state.
Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R): As an avid Trump ally, Mastriano reportedly "spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account to provide transportation for Trump supporters to attend the 'Save America Rally' on January 6." The report also indicates that he "was present on the Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded." Like Perry, Mastriano also spoke with Donoghue in reference to unfounded claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania.
Trump campaign legal advisor Cleta Mitchell: Described as one of the earliest advocates for Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, the Senate report also notes Mitchell was a "participant in the January 2, 2021 call where Trump 5 pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to 'find 11,780 votes.'"
==
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/newly-released-documents-show-az-fraudit
it is not like we didn’t already know that the so-called audit is a fraudit. But the American Oversight group has recently obtained thousands of pages of records related to the “audit” as the result of a public records lawsuit.
American Oversight is still reviewing the records. VICE News notes that the trove includes communications that suggest Donald Trump wanted to fund it and that his allies were involved from the start.
one prominent Trump ally who turns up in the documents is Trump’s former chief of staff and former RNC chair Reince Priebus. American Oversight found that audit spokesman Randy Pullen texted Priebus in December, before Pullen was officially involved in the audit.
That month, Pullen texted Priebus to tell him about the potential for a “Forensic audit,” and in March asked Priebus for “suggestions on election audit firms.” (Priebus said he would check.) Another text from Pullen to [AZ Republican Committee’s Bruce] Ash, sent on March 8, appears to reference Priebus: “I texted Reince and ask if he would like to help out on the audit,” Pullen said, then followed up to say they were speaking later that morning.
Trump lawyers also show up in the documents. They communicated with with OAN “reporter” Christina Bobb, who helped launch the fraudit, helped fund it and was given special access to its proceedings. More from American Oversight:
In December, according to records previously obtained by American Oversight, One America News reporter Christina Bobb — who later began raising money for the “audit” — provided Fann [Arizona's Senate president] with purported “evidence” of voter fraud, writing that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had “asked me to send you these declarations.” The newly released records include a group text from March 31 involving Fann and Bobb, with Giuliani also included, in which Fann passes along a document with a title that began “Pres. Fann audit hiring.”
Another Trump lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, was also looped in on a number of communications, including an Aug. 2 email chain started by Scott Sigman, a Pennsylvania attorney who appears to be handling the issuing of checks related to the “audit.” Sigman emailed Mitchell, Logan, Pullen, and Thomas Datwyler (the treasurer of a group called the American Voting Rights Foundation) seeking signatures for payments.
Then there is Shiva Ayyadurai, aka “Dr. Shiva,” an anti-vaxxer, pro-Trumper who dubiously claims he invented email and has falsely accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of being hellbent on forced and mandatory vaccines. American Oversight reported that its newly-obtained documents include a signed contract between Cyber Ninjas, the unqualified firm conducting the audit, and Ayyadurai.
Priebus plans to bring Dr. Shiva to Wisconsin for its "investigation":
Last month, Priebus reportedly said during an interview that the Wisconsin investigation would be bringing in “Dr. Shiva.” https://t.co/232ivCy3ol
— American Oversight (@weareoversight) September 1, 2021
Some of the frauditors made some darned good money, too!
Some of the positions paid up to $125/hour. pic.twitter.com/RPY7XYpymB
— TRAPEZOID OF DISCOVERY (@get_innocuous) September 1, 2021
There’s still plenty left to be discovered. VICE notes that 2,500 of the Arizona Senate’s most sensitive documents, including almost all direct communications with Cyber Ninjas and CEO Doug Logan, have been withheld as privileged. Meanwhile, you can dive into the documents already released here.
omg
no lnx
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie
The New Yorker
A Reporter at Large
August 9, 2021 Issue
The Big Money Behind the Big Lie
Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy are being promoted by rich and powerful conservative groups that are determined to win at all costs.
By Jane Mayer
August 2, 2021
It was tempting to dismiss the show unfolding inside the Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, as an unintended comedy. One night in June, a few hundred people gathered for the première of “The Deep Rig,” a film financed by the multimillionaire founder of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne, who is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump. Styled as a documentary, the movie asserts that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen by supporters of Joe Biden, including by Antifa members who chatted about their sinister plot on a conference call. The evening’s program featured live appearances by Byrne and a local QAnon conspiracist, BabyQ, who claimed to be receiving messages from his future self. They were joined by the film’s director, who had previously made an exposé contending that the real perpetrators of 9/11 were space aliens.
But the event, for all its absurdities, had a dark surprise: “The Deep Rig” repeatedly quotes Doug Logan, the C.E.O. of Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based company that consults with clients on software security. In a voice-over, Logan warns, “If we don’t fix our election integrity now, we may no longer have a democracy.” He also suggests, without evidence, that members of the “deep state,” such as C.I.A. agents, have intentionally spread disinformation about the election. Although it wasn’t the first time that Logan had promoted what has come to be known as the Big Lie about the 2020 election—he had tweeted unsubstantiated claims that Trump had been victimized by voter fraud—the film offered stark confirmation of Logan’s entanglement in fringe conspiracies. Nevertheless, the president of the Arizona State Senate, Karen Fann, has put Logan’s company in charge of a “forensic audit”—an ongoing review of the state’s 2020 Presidential vote. It’s an unprecedented undertaking, with potentially explosive consequences for American democracy.
Approximately 2.1 million Presidential votes were cast in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and accounts for most of the state’s population. In recent years, younger voters and people of color have turned the county’s electorate increasingly Democratic—a shift that helped Biden win the traditionally conservative state, by 10,457 votes. Since the election, the county has become a focus of ire for Trump and his supporters. By March, when Logan’s company was hired, the county had already undergone four election audits, all of which upheld the outcome. Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican and a former Trump ally, had certified Biden’s victory. But Trump’s core supporters were not assuaged.
As soon as the Fox News Decision Desk called the state for Biden, at 11:20 p.m. on November 3rd, Trump demanded that the network “reverse this!” When Fox held firm, he declared, “This is a major fraud.” By the time of the “Deep Rig” première, the standoff had dragged on for more than half a year. The Cyber Ninjas audit was supposed to conclude in May, but at the company’s request Fann has repeatedly extended it. On July 28th, the auditors completed a hand recount, but they are still demanding access to the computer routers used by Maricopa County and also want to scrutinize images of mail-in-ballot envelopes. The U.S. Department of Justice has warned that “private actors who have neither experience nor expertise in handling” ballots could face prosecution for failing to follow federal audit rules. Trump, meanwhile, has fixated on Arizona’s audit, describing it as a step toward his “reinstatement.” On July 24th, he appeared in Phoenix for a “Rally to Protect Our Elections,” and said, “I am not the one trying to undermine American democracy—I’m the one trying to save American democracy.” Predicting that the audit would vindicate him, he rambled angrily for nearly two hours about having been cheated, calling the election “a scam—the greatest crime in history.”
In June, I stood in the bleachers at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, where the audit was taking place, and witnessed people examining carton after carton of paper ballots cast by Arizonans last fall. Some inspectors used microscopes to investigate surreal allegations: that some ballots had been filled out by machines or were Asian counterfeits with telltale bamboo fibres. Other inspectors looked for creases in mail-in ballots, to determine whether they had been legitimately sent in envelopes or—as Trump has alleged—dumped in bulk.
As the audit has unfolded, various violations of professional norms have been observed, including inspectors caught with pens whose ink matched what was used on ballots. One auditor turned out to have been an unsuccessful Republican candidate during the election. As I watched the proceedings, black-vested paid supervisors monitored the process, but their role was cloaked in secrecy. The audit is almost entirely privately funded, and a county judge in Arizona recently ordered the State Senate to disclose who is paying for it. Last week, Cyber Ninjas acknowledged having received $5.7 million in private donations, most of it from nonprofit groups led by Trump allies who live outside Arizona, including Byrne.
I was joined in the bleachers by Ken Bennett, a former Arizona secretary of state and a Republican, whom the State Senate had designated its liaison to the audit. He acknowledged that, if the auditors end up claiming to have found large discrepancies, “that will of course be very inflammatory.” Indeed, a recent incendiary claim by the auditors—that the vote had tallied about seventy thousand more mail-in ballots than had been postmarked—prompted one Republican state senator to propose a recall of Arizona’s electoral votes for Biden. (In fact, the auditors misunderstood what they were counting.) Nevertheless, Bennett defended the audit process: “It’s important to prove to both sides that the election was done accurately and fairly. If we lurch from one election to another with almost half the electorate thinking the election was a fraud, it’s going to rip our country apart.”
Many experts on democratic governance, however, believe that efforts to upend long-settled election practices are what truly threaten to rip the country apart. Chad Campbell, a Democrat who was the minority leader in the Arizona House of Representatives until 2014, when he left to become a consultant in Phoenix, has been shocked by the state’s anti-democratic turn. For several years, he sat next to Karen Fann when she was a member of the House, and in his view she’s gone from being a traditional Republican lawmaker to being a member of “Trump’s cult of personality.” He said, “I don’t know if she believes it or not, or which would be worse.” Arizona, he added, is in the midst of a “nonviolent overthrow in some ways—it’s subtle, and not in people’s face because it’s not happening with weapons. But it’s still a complete overthrow of democracy. They’re trying to disenfranchise everyone who is not older white guys.”
Arizona is hardly the only place where attacks on the electoral process are under way: a well-funded national movement has been exploiting Trump’s claims of fraud in order to promote alterations to the way that ballots are cast and counted in forty-nine states, eighteen of which have passed new voting laws in the past six months. Republican-dominated legislatures have also stripped secretaries of state and other independent election officials of their power. The chair of Arizona’s Republican Party, Kelli Ward, has referred to the state’s audit as a “domino,” and has expressed hope that it will inspire similar challenges elsewhere.
Ralph Neas has been involved in voting-rights battles since the nineteen-eighties, when, as a Republican, he served as the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He has overseen a study of the Arizona audit for the nonpartisan Century Foundation, and he told me that, though the audit is a “farce,” it may nonetheless have “extraordinary consequences.” He said, “The Maricopa County audit exposes exactly what the Big Lie is all about. If they come up with an analysis that discredits the 2020 election results in Arizona, it will be replicated in other states, furthering more chaos. That will enable new legislation. Millions of Americans could be disenfranchised, helping Donald Trump to be elected again in 2024. That’s the bottom line. Maricopa County is the prism through which to view everything. It’s not so much about 2020—it’s about 2022 and 2024. This is a coördinated national effort to distort not just what happened in 2020 but to regain the House of Representatives and the Presidency.”
Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the country’s foremost election-law experts, told me, “I’m scared shitless.” Referring to the array of new laws passed by Republican state legislatures since the 2020 election, he said, “It’s not just about voter suppression. What I’m really worried about is election subversion. Election officials are being put in place who will mess with the count.”
Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, whose office has authority over the administration of elections, told me that the conspiracy-driven audit “looks so comical you have to laugh at it sometimes.” But Hobbs, a Democrat, who is running for governor, warned, “It’s dangerous. It’s feeding the kind of misinformation that led to the January 6th insurrection.” QAnon followers have been celebrating the audit as the beginning of a “Great Awakening” that will eject Biden from the White House. She noted, “I’ve gotten death threats. I’ve had armed protestors outside my house. Every day, there is a total barrage of social media to our office. We’ve had to route our phones to voice mail so that no one has to listen to it. It can be really traumatizing. I feel beaten up.” She added, “But I’m not going to cave to their tactics—because I think they’re laying the groundwork to steal the 2024 elections.”
Although the Arizona audit may appear to be the product of local extremists, it has been fed by sophisticated, well-funded national organizations whose boards of directors include some of the country’s wealthiest and highest-profile conservatives. Dark-money organizations, sustained by undisclosed donors, have relentlessly promoted the myth that American elections are rife with fraud, and, according to leaked records of their internal deliberations, they have drafted, supported, and in some cases taken credit for state laws that make it harder to vote.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island who has tracked the flow of dark money in American politics, told me that a “flotilla of front groups” once focussed on advancing such conservative causes as capturing the courts and opposing abortion have now “more or less shifted to work on the voter-suppression thing.” These groups have cast their campaigns as high-minded attempts to maintain “election integrity,” but Whitehouse believes that they are in fact tampering with the guardrails of democracy.
One of the movement’s leaders is the Heritage Foundation, the prominent conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. It has been working with the American Legislative Exchange Council (alec)—a corporate-funded nonprofit that generates model laws for state legislators—on ways to impose new voting restrictions.
Among those deep in the fight is Leonard Leo, a chairman of the Federalist Society, the legal organization known for its decades-long campaign to fill the courts with conservative judges. In February, 2020, the Judicial Education Project, a group tied to Leo, quietly rebranded itself as the Honest Elections Project, which subsequently filed briefs at the Supreme Court, and in numerous states, opposing mail-in ballots and other reforms that have made it easier for people to vote.
Another newcomer to the cause is the Election Integrity Project California. And a group called FreedomWorks, which once concentrated on opposing government regulation, is now demanding expanded government regulation of voters, with a project called the National Election Protection Initiative.
These disparate nonprofits have one thing in common: they have all received funding from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Based in Milwaukee, the private, tax-exempt organization has become an extraordinary force in persuading mainstream Republicans to support radical challenges to election rules—a tactic once relegated to the far right. With an endowment of some eight hundred and fifty million dollars, the foundation funds a network of groups that have been stoking fear about election fraud, in some cases for years. Public records show that, since 2012, the foundation has spent some eighteen million dollars supporting eleven conservative groups involved in election issues.
It might seem improbable that a low-profile family foundation in Wisconsin has assumed a central role in current struggles over American democracy. But the modern conservative movement has depended on leveraging the fortunes of wealthy reactionaries. In 1903, Lynde Bradley, a high-school dropout in Milwaukee, founded what would become the Allen-Bradley company. He was soon joined by his brother Harry, and they got rich by selling electronic instruments such as rheostats. Harry, a John Birch Society founding member, started a small family foundation that initially devoted much of its giving to needy employees and to civic causes in Milwaukee. In 1985, after the brothers’ death, their heirs sold the company to the defense contractor Rockwell International, for $1.65 billion, generating an enormous windfall for the foundation. The Bradley Foundation remains small in comparison with such liberal behemoths as the Ford Foundation, but it has become singularly preoccupied with wielding national political influence. It has funded conservative projects ranging from school-choice initiatives to the controversial scholarship of Charles Murray, the co-author of the 1994 book “The Bell Curve,” which argues that Blacks are less likely than whites to join the “cognitive elite.” And, at least as far back as 2012, it has funded groups challenging voting rights in the name of fighting fraud.
Since the 2020 election, this movement has evolved into a broader and more aggressive assault on democracy. According to some surveys, a third of Americans now believe that Biden was illegitimately elected, and nearly half of Trump supporters agree that Republican legislators should overturn the results in some states that Biden won. Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution, recently told The Economist, “We need to regard what’s happening now as epistemic warfare by some Americans on other Americans.” Pillars of the conservative establishment, faced with a changing U.S. voter population that threatens their agenda, are exploiting Trump’s contempt for norms to devise ways to hold on to power. Senator Whitehouse said of the campaign, “It’s a massive covert operation run by a small group of billionaire élites. These are powerful interests with practically unlimited resources who have moved on to manipulating that most precious of American gifts—the vote.”
An animating force behind the Bradley Foundation’s war on “election fraud” is Cleta Mitchell, a fiercely partisan Republican election lawyer, who joined the organization’s board of directors in 2012. Until recently, she was virtually unknown to most Americans. But, on January 3rd, the Washington Post exposed the contents of a private phone call, recorded the previous day, during which Trump threatened election officials in Georgia with a “criminal offense” unless they could “find” 11,780 more votes for him—just enough to alter the results. Also on the call was Mitchell, who challenged the officials to provide records proving that dead people hadn’t cast votes. The call was widely criticized as a rogue effort to overturn the election, and Foley & Lardner, the Milwaukee-based law firm where Mitchell was a partner, announced that it was “concerned” about her role, and then parted ways with her. Trump’s call prompted the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, to begin a criminal investigation.
In a series of e-mails and phone calls with me, Mitchell adamantly defended her work with the Trump campaign, and said that in Georgia, where she has centered her efforts, “I don’t think we can say with certainty who won.” She told me that there were countless election “irregularities,” such as voters using post-office boxes as their residences, in violation of state law. “I believe there were more illegal votes cast than the margin of victory,” she said. “The only remedy is a new election.” Georgia’s secretary of state rejected her claims, but Mitchell insists that the decision lacked a rigorous evaluation of the evidence. With her support, diehard conspiracy theorists are still litigating the matter in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta. Because they keep demanding that election officials prove a negative—that corruption didn’t happen—their requests to keep interrogating the results can be repeated almost indefinitely. Despite three independent counts of Georgia’s vote, including a hand recount, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory, Mitchell argues that “Trump never got his day in court,” adding, “There are a lot of miscarriages of justice I’ve seen and experienced in my life, and this was one of them.”
Mitchell, who is seventy, has warm friendships with people in both parties, and she often appears grandmotherly, in pastel knit suits and reading glasses. But, like Angela Lansbury in “The Manchurian Candidate,” to whom she bears a striking resemblance, she should not be underestimated. She began her political career in Oklahoma, as an outspoken Democrat and a champion of the Equal Rights Amendment. She was elected to the state legislature in her twenties, but then lost a bid for lieutenant governor, in 1986. She told me that she subsequently underwent a political conversion: when her stepson squandered the college tuition that she was paying, she turned against the idea of welfare in favor of personal responsibility, and began reading conservative critiques of liberalism. When I first interviewed her for this magazine, in 1996, she told me that “overreaching government regulation is one of the great scandals of our times.”
On behalf of Republican candidates and groups, she began to fight limits on campaign spending. She also represented numerous right-wing nonprofits, including the National Rifle Association, whose board she joined in the early two-thousands. A former N.R.A. official recently told the Guardian that Mitchell was the “fringe of the fringe,” and a Republican voting-rights lawyer said that “she tells clients what they want to hear, regardless of the law or reality.”
In our conversations, Mitchell mocked what she called the mainstream media’s “narrative” of a “vast right-wing conspiracy to suppress the vote of Black people,” and insisted that the fraud problem was significant. “I actually think your readers need to hear from people like me—believe it or not, there are tens of millions of us,” she wrote. “We are not crazy. At least not to us. We are intelligent and educated people who are very concerned about the future of America. And we are among the vast majority of Americans who support election-integrity measures.” Echoing what has become the right’s standard talking point, she declared that her agenda for elections is “to make it harder to cheat.”
Mitchell told me that the Democrats used the pandemic as a “great pretext” to “be able to cheat”: they caused “administrative chaos” by changing rules about early and absentee voting, and they didn’t adequately police fraud. She denied that race had motivated her actions in Georgia. Yet, in an e-mail to me, she said that Democrats are “using black voters as a prop to accomplish their political objectives.”
Few experts have found Mitchell’s evidence convincing. On November 12, 2020, the Trump Administration’s own election authorities declared the Presidential vote to be “the most secure in American history.” It is true that in many American elections there are small numbers of questionable ballots. An Associated Press investigation found that, in 2020, a hundred and eighty-two of the 3.4 million ballots cast in Arizona were problematic. Four of the ballots have led to criminal charges. But the consensus among nonpartisan experts is that the amount of fraud, particularly in major races, is negligible. As Phil Keisling, a former secretary of state in Oregon, who pioneered universal voting by mail, has said, “Voters don’t cast fraudulent ballots for the same reason counterfeiters don’t manufacture pennies—it doesn’t pay.”
What explains, then, the hardening conviction among Republicans that the 2020 race was stolen? Michael Podhorzer, a senior adviser to the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which invested deeply in expanding Democratic turnout in 2020, suggests that the two parties now have irreconcilable beliefs about whose votes are legitimate. “What blue-state people don’t understand about why the Big Lie works,” he said, is that it doesn’t actually require proof of fraud. “What animates it is the belief that Biden won because votes were cast by some people in this country who others think are not ‘real’ Americans.” This anti-democratic belief has been bolstered by a constellation of established institutions on the right: “white evangelical churches, legislators, media companies, nonprofits, and even now paramilitary groups.” Podhorzer noted, “Trump won white America by eight points. He won non-urban areas by over twenty points. He is the democratically elected President of white America. It’s almost like he represents a nation within a nation.”
Alarmism about election fraud in America extends at least as far back as Reconstruction, when white Southerners disenfranchised newly empowered Black voters and politicians by accusing them of corruption. After the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, some white conservatives were frank about their hostility to democracy. Forty years ago, Paul Weyrich, who helped establish the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, admitted, “I don’t want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Like many conservatives of her generation, Cleta Mitchell was galvanized by the disputed 2000 election, in which George W. Bush and Al Gore battled for weeks over the outcome in Florida. She repeatedly spoke out on behalf of Bush, who won the state by only five hundred and thirty-seven votes. A dispute over recounts ended up at the Supreme Court.
Few people noticed at the time, but in that case, Bush v. Gore, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, hinted at a radical reading of the Constitution that, two decades later, undergirds many of the court challenges on behalf of Trump. In a concurring opinion, the Justices argued that state legislatures have the plenary power to run elections and can even pass laws giving themselves the right to appoint electors. Today, the so-called Independent Legislature Doctrine has informed Trump and the right’s attempts to use Republican-dominated state legislatures to overrule the popular will. Nathaniel Persily, an election-law expert at Stanford, told me, “It’s giving intellectual respectability to an otherwise insane, anti-democratic argument.”
Barack Obama’s election in 2008 made plain that the voting-rights wars were fuelled, in no small part, by racial animus. Bigoted conspiracists, including Trump, spent years trying to undermine the result by falsely claiming that Obama wasn’t born in America. Birtherism, which attempted to undercut a landmark election in which the turnout rate among Black voters nearly matched that of whites, was a progenitor of the Big Lie. As Penda Hair, a founder of the Advancement Project, a progressive voting-rights advocacy group, told me, conservatives were looking at Obama’s victory “and saying, ‘We’ve got to clamp things down’—they’d always tried to suppress the Black vote, but it was then that they came up with new schemes.”
Mitchell was at the forefront of the right’s offensive. In 2010, she accused the Majority Leader of the Senate, the Democrat Harry Reid, who was running for reëlection in Nevada, of planning “to steal this election if he can’t win it outright.” Her evidence was that Democrats in the state had provided “clearly illegal” free food at voter-turnout events—a negligible infraction, given that Reid won by more than forty thousand votes.
A year later, Mitchell successfully defended Trump, who had been exploring a Presidential bid, against charges that he had taken illegal campaign contributions. She had been recommended to Trump by Chris Ruddy, the founder of the conservative media company Newsmax, which was also a Mitchell client. Later, Ruddy introduced the future President to Mitchell over dinner at Mar-a-Lago. (She told me that she found Trump “gracious,” and noted that, since the 2020 election, she has talked with him “pretty often.”)
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, eliminating the Justice Department’s power to screen proposed changes to election procedures in states with discriminatory histories, one of which was Arizona. Terry Goddard, a former Arizona attorney general and a Democrat, told me that “the state has a history of voter suppression, especially against Native Americans.” Before Rehnquist became a Supreme Court Justice, in 1971, he lived in Arizona, where he was accused of administering literacy tests to voters of color. In the mid-two-thousands, Goddard recalled, Republican leaders erected many barriers aimed at deterring Latino voters, some of which the courts struck down. But the 2013 Supreme Court ruling initiated a new era of election manipulation.
Around this time, Mitchell became a director at the Bradley Foundation. Among the board members were George F. Will, the syndicated columnist, and Robert George, a Princeton political philosopher known for his defense of traditional Catholic values. By 2017, Will, who has been a critic of Trump, had stepped down from the Bradley board. But George has continued to serve as a director, even as the foundation has heavily funded groups promulgating the falsehood that election fraud is widespread in America, particularly in minority communities, and sowing doubt about the legitimacy of Biden’s win. The foundation, meanwhile, has given nearly three million dollars to programs that George established at Princeton. He has written in praise of Pence’s refusal to decertify Biden’s election, and has lamented that so many Americans believe, “wrongly,” that “the election was ‘stolen.’ ” But he declined to discuss with me why, then, he serves on the Bradley Foundation’s board.
The board includes Art Pope, the libertarian discount-store magnate, who serves on the board of governors at the University of North Carolina.? Pope, who has also acknowledged the legitimacy of Biden’s victory, declined to discuss his role at the foundation. Another board member is Paul Clement, a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, who is one of the country’s most distinguished Supreme Court litigators. He could not be reached for comment.
Mitchell argues that the right spends “a pittance” on election issues compared with the left. “Have you looked at the Democracy Alliance?” she asked me. The Alliance, whose membership is secret, distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money to many left-leaning causes. But, when it comes to influencing elections, the contrast with the Bradley Foundation is clear. Whereas the Alliance’s efforts have centered on increasing voter participation, the Bradley Foundation has focussed on disqualifying ostensibly illegitimate voters.
Like most private nonprofits, the Bradley Foundation doesn’t disclose much about its inner workings. But in 2016 hackers posted online some of the group’s confidential documents, which showed that, once Mitchell became a director, she began urging the foundation to support nonprofit organizations policing election fraud. Mitchell has professional ties to several of the groups that received money, although she says that she has abstained from voting on grants to any of those organizations.
One recipient of Bradley money is True the Vote, a Texas-based group that, among other things, trains people to monitor polling sites. Mitchell has served as its legal counsel, and hacked documents show that she advocated to the I.R.S. that the group deserved tax-exempt status as a charity. To earn such a designation, a group must file federal tax forms promising not to engage in electoral politics. In a letter of support, she asserted that “fraudulent voting occurs in the United States,” citing a 2010 case in which the F.B.I. arrested nine Floridians for election violations. But, as with many voter-fraud allegations, the details of the case were less than advertised. The accusation involved a school-board election in a rural Black community in which a campaign had collected dozens of absentee ballots, in violation of the law. The charges were eventually dismissed. The judge found “no intent to cast a false or fraudulent ballot.” True the Vote, which was granted tax-exempt status, has since been the subject of numerous complaints from voters, who have accused it of intimidation and racism.
Last year, a Reuters report characterized Mitchell as one of four lawyers leading the conservative war on “election fraud,” and described True the Vote as one of the movement’s hubs. The story linked the group and three other conservative nonprofits to at least sixty-one election lawsuits since 2012. Reuters noted that, during the same period, the four groups, along with two others devoted to election-integrity issues, have received more than three and a half million dollars from the Bradley Foundation.
It’s a surprisingly short leap from making accusations of voter fraud to calling for the nullification of a supposedly tainted election. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a group funded by the Bradley Foundation, is leading the way. Based in Indiana, it has become a prolific source of litigation; in the past year alone, it has brought nine election-law cases in eight states. It has amassed some of the most visible lawyers obsessed with election fraud, including Mitchell, who is its chair and sits on its board.
One of the group’s directors is John Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University, in California. On January 4, 2021, he visited the White House, where he spoke with Trump about ways to void the election. In a nod to the Independent Legislature Doctrine, Eastman and Trump tried to persuade Vice-President Mike Pence to halt the certification of the Electoral College vote, instead throwing the election to the state legislatures. Pence was not persuaded.
Two days later, Eastman spoke at Trump’s “Save America” rally in Washington, hours before the crowds ransacked the Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win. “This is bigger than President Trump!” Eastman declared. “It is the very essence of our republican form of government, and it has to be done!” He thundered that election officials had robbed Trump by illegally casting ballots in the name of non-voters whose records they had extracted, after the polls had closed, from a “secret folder” in electronic voting machines. He told the crowd that the scandal was visible in “the data.” There is no evidence of such malfeasance, however. Eastman, who recently retired, under pressure, from Chapman University, and was stripped of his public duties at another post that he held, at the University of Colorado Boulder, told me he still believes that the election was stolen, and thinks that the audits in Arizona and other states will help prove it. The Bradley Foundation declined to comment on him, or on Mitchell, when asked about its role in funding their activities.
Two other Public Interest Legal Foundation lawyers—its president, J. Christian Adams, and another board member, Hans von Spakovsky—served in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, where they began efforts to use the Voting Rights Act, which was designed to protect Black voters, to prosecute purported fraud by Black voters and election officials. Both men have argued strenuously that American elections are rife with serious fraud, and in 2017 they got a rare opportunity to make their case, when Trump appointed them to a Presidential commission on election integrity. Within months, after the commission was unable to find significant evidence of election fraud, it acrimoniously disbanded. Adams and von Spakovsky, who are members of what Roll Call has termed the Voter Fraud Brain Trust, have nevertheless continued their crusade, sustained partly by Bradley funds. Von Spakovsky now heads the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, which has received grants from the Bradley Foundation.
At Heritage, von Spakovsky has overseen a national tracking system monitoring election-fraud cases. But its data on Arizona, the putative center of the storm, is not exactly alarming: of the millions of votes cast in the state from 2016 to 2020, only nine individuals were convicted of fraud. Each instance involved someone casting a duplicate ballot in another state. There were no recorded cases of identity fraud, ballot stuffing, voting by non-citizens, or other nefarious schemes. The numbers confirm that there is some voter fraud, or at least confusion, but not remotely enough to affect election outcomes.
Even Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer who for years led the Party’s election-law fights, recently conceded to the Times that “a party that’s increasingly old and white whose base is a diminishing share of the population is conjuring up charges of fraud to erect barriers to voting for people it fears won’t support its candidates.”
The Voter Fraud Brain Trust lent support to Trump’s lies from the time he took office. In 2016, when he lost the popular vote by nearly three million ballots, he insisted that he had actually won it, spuriously blaming rampant fraud in California. Soon afterward, von Spakovsky gave Trump’s false claim credence by publishing an essay at Heritage arguing that there was no way to disprove the allegation, because “we have an election system that’s based on the honor system.”
More than a year before the 2020 election, Cleta Mitchell and her allies sensed political peril for Trump and began reviewing strategies to help keep him in office. According to a leaked video of an address that she gave in May, 2019, to the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative society, she warned that Democrats were successfully registering what she sarcastically referred to as “the disenfranchised.” She continued, “They know that if they target certain communities and they can get them registered and get them to the polls, then those groups . . . will vote ninety per cent, ninety-five per cent for Democrats.”
One possible countermove was for conservative state legislators to reëngineer the way the Electoral College has worked for more than a hundred years, in essence by invoking the Independent Legislature Doctrine. The Constitution gives states the authority to choose their Presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Since the late nineteenth century, states have delegated that authority to the popular vote. But, arguably, the Constitution permits state legislatures to take this authority back. Legislators could argue that an election had been compromised by irregularities or fraud, forcing them to intervene.
In August, 2019, e-mails show, Mitchell co-chaired a high-level working group with Shawnna Bolick, a Republican state representative from Phoenix. Among the topics slated for discussion was the Electoral College. The working group was convened by alec, the corporate-backed nonprofit that transmits conservative policy ideas and legislation to state lawmakers. The Bradley Foundation has long supported alec, and Mitchell has worked closely with it, serving as its outside counsel until recently.
Mitchell and Bolick declined to answer questions about the working group’s focus, but it appears that Bolick’s participation was productive. After the election, she signed a resolution demanding that Congress block the certification of Biden’s victory and award Arizona’s electors to Trump. Then, early this year, Bolick introduced a bill proposing a radical reading of Article II of the Constitution, along the lines of the Independent Legislature Doctrine. It would enable a majority of the Arizona legislature to override the popular vote if it found fault with the outcome, and dictate the state’s Electoral College votes itself—anytime up until Inauguration Day. Bolick has described her bill as just “a good, democratic check and balance,” but her measure was considered so extreme that it died in committee, despite Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. Yet, simply by putting forth the idea as legislation, she helped lend legitimacy to the audacious scheme that the Trump campaign desperately pursued in the final days before Biden’s Inauguration: to rely on Republican-led state legislatures to overturn Electoral College votes. Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, who served as an associate White House counsel under Obama, told me, “Institutions like the Heritage Foundation and alec are providing the grease to turn these attacks on democracy into law.”
Bolick has since announced her candidacy for secretary of state in Arizona. Her husband, Clint Bolick, is an Arizona Supreme Court justice and a leader in right-wing legal circles. Clarence Thomas, one of the three U.S. Supreme Court Justices who signed on to the concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore laying out the Independent Legislature Doctrine, is the godfather of one of Clint Bolick’s sons. If Shawnna Bolick wins her race, she will oversee future elections in the state. And, if the Supreme Court faces another case in which arguments about the Independent Legislature Doctrine come into play, there may now be enough conservative Justices to agree with Thomas that there are circumstances under which legislatures, not voters, could have the final word in American elections.
Months before the 2020 vote, Lisa Nelson, the C.E.O. of alec, also anticipated contesting the election results. That February, she told a private gathering of the Council for National Policy about a high-level review that her group had undertaken of ways to challenge “the validity” of the Presidential returns. A video of the proceedings was obtained by the investigative group Documented, and first reported by the Washington Spectator. In her speech, Nelson noted that she was working with Mitchell and von Spakovsky.
Although the law bars charitable organizations such as the Council for National Policy from engaging in electoral politics, Nelson unabashedly acknowledged, “Obviously, we all want President Trump to win, and win the national vote.” She went on, “But it’s very clear that, really, what it comes down to is the states, and the state legislators.” One plan, she said, was to urge conservative legislators to voice doubt to their respective secretaries of state, questioning the election’s outcome and asking, “What did happen that night?”
By August, 2020, when the Council for National Policy held another meeting, the pandemic had hurt Trump’s prospects, and talk within the membership about potential Democratic election fraud had reached a frenzy. At the meeting, Adams, the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s president, echoed Trump’s raging about mail-in ballots, describing them as “the No. 1 left-wing agenda.” He urged conservatives not to be deterred by criticism: “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist, and so forth.”
A younger member of the organization, Charlie Kirk—a founder of Turning Point USA, which promotes right-wing ideas on school campuses—injected a note of optimism. He suggested that the pandemic, by closing campuses, would likely suppress voting among college students, a left-leaning bloc. “Please keep the campuses closed,” he said, to cheers. “Like, it’s a great thing!”
Five months later, Turning Point Action, a “social welfare organization” run by Kirk’s group, was one of nearly a dozen groups behind Trump’s “March to Save America,” on January 6th. Shortly before the rally, Kirk tweeted that the groups he leads would send “80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” His tweet was deleted after the crowds assaulted the Capitol.
Turning Point, which has received small grants from the Bradley Foundation, is headquartered in Arizona, and it has played a significant role in the radicalization of the state, in part by amplifying fear and anger about voter fraud. Turning Point’s chief operating officer, Tyler Bowyer, is a member of the Republican National Committee and a former chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party. Bowyer’s friend Jake Hoffman runs an Arizona-based digital-marketing company, Rally Forge, that has been Turning Point’s highest-compensated contractor. In the summer of 2020, Rally Forge helped Turning Point use social media to spread incendiary misinformation about the coming elections.
In September, the Washington Post reported that Rally Forge, on behalf of Turning Point Action, had paid teen-agers to deceptively post thousands of copycat propaganda messages, much as Russia had done during the 2016 campaign. Adult leaders had instructed the teens to tweak the wording of their posts, to evade detection by technology companies. Some messages were posted under the teens’ accounts, but others were sent under assumed personae. Many posts claimed that mail-in ballots would “lead to fraud,” and that Democrats planned to steal the Presidency.
Turning Point Action denied that it ran a troll farm, arguing that the teen-age employees were genuine, but a study by the Internet Observatory at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center documented the scheme, along with other dubious practices by Rally Forge. In 2016, the company fabricated a politician—complete with a doctored photograph—to run as an Independent write-in candidate against Andy Biggs, a far-right Republican seeking an open congressional seat in Arizona. The ploy, evidently intended to siphon votes from Biggs’s Democratic opponent, didn’t go far, but it was hardly the company’s only scam. The Guardian has shown how Rally Forge also created a phony left-wing front group, America Progress Now, which promoted Green Party candidates online in 2018, apparently to hurt Democrats in several races.
In October, 2020, Rally Forge was banned from Facebook, and its president, Hoffman, was permanently suspended by Twitter. Undeterred, he ran as a pro-Trump Republican for the Arizona House—and won. Remarkably, the chamber’s Republican leadership then appointed him the vice-chair of the Committee on Government and Elections. Since getting elected, Hoffman has challenged the legitimacy of Biden’s victory, called for election audits, and, in coördination with the Heritage Foundation, used his position to propose numerous bills making it more difficult to vote.
This past spring, at a private gathering outside Tucson, Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action—the politically active arm of the Heritage Foundation—singled out Hoffman for praise. As a leaked video of her remarks revealed, she told supporters that, with the help of Hoffman and other state legislators, the nonprofit group was rewriting America’s election laws. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them, or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe,” Anderson explained. “We’ve got three bills done in Arizona!” She continued, “We’re moving four more through the state of Arizona right now . . . simple bills, all straight from the Heritage recommendations.” One of the bills, she noted, was “written and carried by Jake Hoffman,” whom she described as “a longtime friend of the Heritage Foundation.”
Hoffman’s bills have made the Heritage Foundation’s wish list a reality. Voting by mail has long been popular in Arizona, with as many as ninety per cent of voters doing so in 2020, but one of Hoffman’s bills made it a felony to send a mail-in ballot to residents who hadn’t requested one, unless they were on an official list of early voters. Another bill, which Hoffman supported, will, according to one estimate, push as many as two hundred thousand people off the state’s list of early voters. Opponents say that this legislation will disproportionately purge Latinos, who constitute twenty-four per cent of the state’s eligible voters. Another bill by Hoffman banned state election officials from accepting outside donations to help pay for any aspect of election administration, including voter registration. (One of the bill’s targets was Mark Zuckerberg, whose foundation helped county election officials in Arizona handle the pandemic.) In February, at a hearing of the Committee on Government and Elections, a witness from the Washington-based Capital Research Center—also funded by the Bradley Foundation—testified in support of Hoffman’s legislation. Athena Salman, the ranking Democrat, told me she was incensed that Hoffman—“a guy who paid teen-agers to lie”—was put on the election committee. “It’s the fox guarding the henhouse!” she said.
Anderson, of Heritage, declined to respond to questions about the group’s collaborations with Hoffman, instead sending a prepared statement: “After a year when voters’ trust in our elections plummeted, restoring that trust should be the top priority of legislators and governors nationwide. That’s why Heritage Action is deploying our established grassroots network for state advocacy for the first time ever. There is nothing more important than ensuring every American is confident their vote counts—and we will do whatever it takes to get there.”
Hoffman, who formerly served as a town-council member in Queen Creek, a deeply conservative part of Maricopa County, did not respond to requests for comment. Kristin Clark, a Democrat who mounted a write-in campaign against him after the news of his troll farm broke, called Hoffman an “unintelligent man who wants to be a big guy.” She told me, “The Republicans here have changed. They were conservative, but now they’ve sold out. It’s money that’s changed it. All these giant, corporate groups that are faceless—it’s outside money.” In her view, “Jake Hoffman is but a cog.”
The spark that ignited the Arizona audit was an amateur video, taken on Election Night, of an unidentified female voter outside a polling place in what Kristin Clark recognized as Hoffman’s district. The voter claimed that election workers had tried to sabotage her ballot by deliberately giving her a Sharpie that the electronic scanners couldn’t read. Her claim was false: the scanners could read Sharpie ink, and the ballots had been designed so that the flip side wouldn’t be affected if the ink bled through. Nevertheless, the video went viral.
Among the first to spread the Sharpiegate conspiracy was another one of Charlie Kirk’s youth groups, Students for Trump. The next day, as Trump furiously insisted he had won an election that he ended up losing by roughly seven million votes, protesters staged angry rallies in Maricopa County, where ballots were still being counted. Adding an aura of legal credibility to the conspiracy theory, Adams, the Public Interest Legal Foundation president, immediately filed suit against Maricopa County, alleging that a Sharpie-using voter he represented had been disenfranchised. The case was soon dismissed, but not before Adams tweeted, “just filed to have our client’s right to #vote upheld. Her #Sharpie ballot was cancelled without cure.” Arizona’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican, investigated, and his office took only a day to conclude that the Sharpie story was nonsense. But, by then, many Trump supporters no longer trusted Arizona’s election results. Clark, the former Democratic challenger to Hoffman, told me that she watched in horror as “they took B.S. and made it real!”
A day after the election, the office of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, reported that, based on a routine, bipartisan hand recount of a sample of ballots, “no discrepancies were found” in Maricopa County. Within days, the mainstream media had called the election for Biden, based on late returns from Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. But Cleta Mitchell, who had been dispatched by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to help the Trump campaign in Georgia, told Fox News, “We’re already double-checking and finding dead people having voted.” As Georgia was ratifying its results with a recount, she tweeted that the tally was “fake!!!”
Meanwhile, on the conservative Web site Townhall, Hoffman demanded “a full audit of the vote count in swing states,” adding that the election was “far from over.” He claimed that there had been “countless violations of state election law, statistical anomalies and election irregularities in more than a half dozen states,” and argued that state legislatures should therefore have the final say. By December, he had joined his friend Bowyer and other members of the state’s Republican Party in filing suit against Arizona’s governor, calling for the state to set aside Arizona’s eleven electoral votes and allow the legislature to intervene.
At the same time, another version of the Independent Legislature Doctrine argument was being mounted in Pennsylvania, by the Honest Elections Project, the group tied to Leonard Leo, of the Federalist Society. Local Republicans had challenged a state-court ruling that adjusted voting procedures during the pandemic. The Honest Elections Project filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the Pennsylvania court had usurped the legislature’s authority to oversee elections. The effort didn’t succeed, but Richard Hasen, the election-law professor, regards such arguments as “powder kegs” that threaten American democracy. Leo didn’t respond to requests for comment, but Hasen believes that Leo is trying to preserve “minority rule” in elections in order to advance his agenda. Hasen told me, “Making it harder to vote helps them get more Republican victories, which helps them get more conservative judges and courts.”
In the case of Arizona, it took only a week for a federal district court to dismiss Hoffman and Bowyer’s suit, citing an absence of “relevant or reliable evidence.” The court admonished the plaintiffs that “gossip and innuendo” cannot “be the basis for upending Arizona’s 2020 General Election.” Hoffman and the other plaintiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the matter, but it waited to do so until March. In the meantime, election-fraud conspiracy theories in Arizona were growing out of control.
On November 12th, Biden was declared the winner in Maricopa County. Soon after, a Republican member of the county’s Board of Supervisors, Bill Gates, was picking up takeout food for his family when the board’s chairman—one of four Republicans on the five-person board—called to warn him to be careful going home. Ninety angry people had gathered outside the chairman’s house, and Gates’s place could be next. “We’d all been doxed,” Gates told me. He and his wife are the legal guardians of a teen-ager whose father, a Ugandan, was nearly killed by henchmen for Idi Amin. “It’s chilling to see the parallels,” Gates told me. “You’d never think there were any parallels to a strongman autocracy in Africa.” Gates considers himself a political-science nerd, but, he said, “I had no concept that we were heading where we were heading.”
Gates, who moved to Arizona as a teen-ager, was a latchkey kid whose idea of entertainment was watching C-span. He is forty-nine and describes himself as a “child of the Reagan Revolution” who started a Republican club in high school. He attended Drake University, in Iowa, partly so that he could witness the state’s Presidential caucuses. Winning a Truman Scholarship opened his way to Harvard Law School, where he joined the Federalist Society, the Harvard Law School Republican Club, and the Journal of Law and Public Policy. At Harvard, membership in all three was called the “conservative trifecta.” Gates can scarcely believe how the Republican Party and the conservative movement have changed in the years since.
Over breakfast in June, in Phoenix, he apologized for his eyes welling up with tears as he described his efforts to stand up to his own party’s mob. He said that he and the other county supervisors had been “feeling great” about how well their administration of the election had gone despite the pandemic. But, as the final ballots were counted and Trump fell behind, Maricopa County became the focal point of conspiracy theorists. “Alex Jones and those guys start coming out here, and they’re protesting outside of our election center as the counting is going on,” he said. He could hear people screaming, and what sounded like a drum: “It was Lollapalooza for the alt-right—it was crazy.” He started getting calls and e-mails saying, “You guys need to stop the steal.” Gates told me, “I’d wonder, Is this a real person?” But some angry messages came from people he knew. They said they’d never support him again. “People thought I was failing them,” Gates said. “I have been called a traitor so many times in the last six months.”
Gates says that Karen Fann, the Arizona Senate’s president, confided to him that she knew there was “nothing to” the fraud charges. (She didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Nevertheless, she buckled under the political pressure and authorized a subpoena of the county’s ballots, for the “forensic audit.” At one point, county supervisors were told that if they didn’t comply they would face contempt charges and, potentially, could be imprisoned. For a time, the official Twitter account for the audit accused the supervisors, without evidence, of “spoliation” of the ballots. “I get a little emotional when I talk about it,” Gates said. “My daughter called me, frantically trying to find out whether or not I was going to be thrown in jail.” Trump supporters set up a guillotine on a grassy plaza outside Arizona’s statehouse, demanding the supervisors’ heads. Inside, Gates recalled, one Republican member after another rose to denounce the county supervisors.
A representative for the national Republican Party tried to silence Gates when he spoke out to defend the integrity of Arizona’s election. He told me that Hoffman’s ally Tyler Bowyer, of the Republican National Committee, paid him a visit and warned, “You need to stop it.” According to Gates, Bowyer made it clear that “the Republican National Committee supports this audit.” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Bowyer, denied that the visit was an official attempt at intimidation, calling it instead a “personal courtesy.”
Gates said that after he received death threats he fled with his family to an Airbnb. At one point, the sheriff sent two deputies to guard Gates’s home overnight. Trump supporters, Gates said, “are basically asking Republican leaders to bow before the altar of the Big Lie—‘You’re willing to do it? O.K., great. You’re not? You’re a rino. You’re a Commie. You are not a Republican.’ It’s been incredibly effective, really, when you think about where we’ve come from January 6th.”
Part of what had drawn Gates to the Republican Party was the Reagan-era doctrine of confronting totalitarianism. He’d long had a fascination with emerging democracies, particularly the former Soviet republics. He had come up with what he admits was a “kooky” retirement plan—“to go to some place like Uzbekistan and help.” He told me, “I’d always thought that, if I had a tragic end, it would be in some place like Tajikistan.” He shook his head. “If you had told me, ‘You’re going to be doing this in the U.S.,’ I would have told you, ‘You’re crazy.’ ”
Some of the political pressure on election officials in Arizona was exerted directly by Trump and his associates, potentially illegally. Interfering in a federal election can be a crime. As the Arizona Republic has reported, the President and his legal adviser Rudy Giuliani phoned state and local officials, including Fann. The White House switchboard tried to connect Trump with the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, but, even though the chairman was a Republican, he ducked the call, lest the President interfere improperly. Giuliani called Gates’s cell phone when he was shopping at Walgreens on Christmas Eve. Not recognizing the number, Gates didn’t answer. “You can’t make this stuff up,” he told me. Giuliani left a voice mail saying it was a “shame” that two Republicans couldn’t work things out—he’d come up with a “nice way” to “get this thing fixed up.”
“I never returned the phone call,” Gates said. A week later, when news broke of Trump’s notorious call to officials in Georgia, Gates was more relieved than ever that he hadn’t called Giuliani back. A panel of judges in New York has since suspended Giuliani’s law license, for threatening the public interest by making “demonstrably false and misleading statements” about the Presidential election.
By New Year’s Eve, when Trump tried and failed to reach the chairman of the Maricopa County board, his Administration was in extraordinary turmoil. Attorney General William Barr had resigned from the Justice Department after declaring that it had detected no significant election fraud. Even so, Trump continued to demand that the department investigate a variety of loony conspiracies, including a plot to erase Trump votes using Italian military satellites. According to a leaked e-mail, a Justice Department attorney disparaged the satellite theory as “pure insanity.” A man supposedly involved in the plot issued a denial to Reuters, and Italian police suggested that the allegation was baseless.
But the conspiracy theory, which became known as Italygate, had bubbled up from the same pools of dark money that were funding other election misinformation. Records show that Italygate was spread by a “social welfare organization” called Nations in Action, whose directors included von Spakovsky. When Talking Points Memo contacted von Spakovsky, he said that he had resigned from the board on January 8th. But the money trail remains. Crooks and Liars, a progressive investigative-reporting site, dug up tax filings showing that the group’s 501(c)(3) sibling, the Nations in Action Globally Lifting Up Fund, had received thousands of dollars from the Judicial Crisis Network—a nonprofit enterprise, closely tied to Leonard Leo, that also funds Turning Point Action.
While Justice Department officials were fending off conspiracy theories being spread by tax-exempt charities in Washington, the pressure was even more acute on local officials in Phoenix. Trump tweeted relentlessly about the audit. He “clearly has had a fascination with this issue, because he thinks it’s the key to his reinstatement,” Gates told me. “It’s not about Arizona. We’re literally pawns in this. This is a national effort to delegitimize the election system.” Gates predicted that, if “Arizona can question this, and show that Trump won,” the game will move on to Colorado, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Virginia, all of which have sent Republican delegations to observe Arizona’s audit. Noting that both QAnon followers and his own state’s Republican Party chair had referred to “dominoes” in connection with the audit, Gates said, “We know what that game is, and how it works.”
It would be tempting for Gates, a lifetime Republican with political ambitions, to blame only Trump for his party’s anti-democratic turn. But he has few such illusions. What’s really going on, he believes, is a reactionary backlash against Obama: “I’ve thought about it a lot. I believe the election of President Obama frightened a lot of Americans.” Gates argues that the fear isn’t entirely about race. He thinks it’s also about cosmopolitanism, secularism, and other contemporary values that make white conservatives uncomfortable. But in the end, he said, “the diversification of America is frightening to a lot of people in my party.”
Gates believes that his party’s reaction may backfire. Polls show that, although the Arizona audit is wildly popular among Republican voters in the state, it alienates independents, who constitute approximately a third of the state’s electorate—and whose support is necessary for statewide candidates to win.
For now, though, conservative groups seem to be doubling down on their investments in election-fraud alarmism. In the next two years, Heritage Action plans to spend twenty-four million dollars mobilizing supporters and lobbyists who will promote “election integrity,” starting in eight battleground states, including Arizona.
It is coördinating its effort with the Election Transparency Initiative, a joint venture of two anti-abortion groups, the Susan B. Anthony List and the American Principles Project. The Election Transparency Initiative has set a fund-raising goal of five million dollars. Cleta Mitchell, having left her law firm, has joined FreedomWorks, the free-market group, where she plans to lead a ten-million-dollar project on voting issues. She will also head the Election Integrity Network at the Conservative Partnership Institute, another Washington-based nonprofit. As a senior legal fellow there, she told the Washington Examiner, she will “help bring all these strings” of conservative election-law activism together, and she added, “I’ve had my finger in so many different pieces of the election-integrity pie for so long.”
Back in Arizona, where the auditors are demanding still more time, Gates believes that the Big Lie has become a “grift” used to motivate Republican voters and donors to support conservative candidates and political groups. “The sad thing is that there are probably millions of people—hardworking, good Americans, maybe retired—who have paid their taxes, always followed the law, and they truly believe this, because of what they’ve been fed by their leaders,” he said. “And what’s so dispiriting is that the people who are pushing it from the top? They know better.” ?
ginni pal
Throughout the 2020 campaign, Thomas remained active on Facebook, condemning Black Lives Matter, opposing COVID-19 shutdowns, and touting the “Walk Away” movement, which purports to spotlight Democrats who became Republicans under Trump. (At least two individuals featured in the “Walk Away” series, both Black, were actually models from royalty-free stock photos.) She also campaigned for Trump in person—and, according to the Intercept, spearheaded a dark-money operation to support the president. Cleta Mitchell, the Republican lawyer who participated in Trump’s shakedown of the Georgia secretary of state, led the project.
After Nov. 3, Thomas grew uncharacteristically quiet on Facebook; she did not share popular conspiracy theories about election fraud, perhaps because election challenges would inevitably come before her husband. She provided her clearest statement yet on Jan. 6, when she enthusiastically endorsed the D.C. rally designed to make Congress overturn the election result and give Trump a second term. There is no evidence that Thomas personally attended the rally, and her posts indicate that she watched the events on TV from another location.
ref
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/04/ginni-thomas-trump-conservative-group/
lee nick s
CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST VIRGINIA “Ginni” Thomas is launching yet another project to wage war on multiple fronts of America’s most heated cultural and political debates. This time, however, her plan will include a project to “protect President Trump” using at least two new campaign-related political entities, according to a presentation obtained by The Intercept and Documented.
Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, unveiled the new venture in a closed meeting of GOP lawmakers, donors, and Christian-right leaders last month, seeming to make reference to the movement disarray and electoral losses suffered by conservatives in the Trump era — and the gains made by left-wing groups and politicians.
The sweeping presentation covered a range of topics, including the “mob tactics” used by leftists against those wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and how the “hard left” has co-opted “the corporate community” to support a ban on housing and employment discrimination against LGBTQ people.“Our house is on fire and we are stomping ants in the driveway. We’re not really focused on the arsonists who are right around us,” Ginni Thomas said.
Some of the most controversial icons in conservative circles will be involved with other branches of Thomas’s new project, which is dubbed “Crowdsourcers.” One such project is titled “Protect Our Heroes,” led by conservative filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe.
The node of the project focused on political campaigns — slated to do business under the name “American D-Day” — will be set up by Cleta Mitchell, a well-known Republican campaign finance lawyer and partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner. D-Day will include a 501(c)(4) arm that can solicit undisclosed donations and a separate PAC registered with the Federal Elections Commission.
O’Keefe and Thomas did not respond to requests for comment. Mitchell, in response to an inquiry from The Intercept, wrote that it was not her “role to answer any questions on this. Sorry.” Asked who to contact about the new venture, Mitchell wrote, “No one. None of your business.”
THOMAS AND MITCHELL announced the suite of projects at an invite-only gathering hosted by the Council for National Policy in McLean, Virginia, in mid-May. The CNP meetings are influential and secretive gatherings designed to advance a hard-edged view of social and political causes.
At the CNP event, Thomas issued a dark warning about a “cultural revolution,” a confrontation conservatives might lose unless they “help explain to America the fight against America.”
The campaign entities and O’Keefe project are among several initiatives to be “incubated” by Thomas’s Crowdsourcers initiative. The presentation lists efforts to “Build Robust Infrastructure,” led by Bill Meierling, chief marketing officer of the American Legislative Exchange Council, and “Brand the Left: You’ve Been Lied To!” led by direct-mail consultant Richard Viguerie.
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/trump-georgia-2649764070
Cleta Mitchell, a conservative attorney and activist who assisted President Donald Trump during his call to the Georgia Secretary of State during which he tried to overturn the results of the election has resigned from Foley & Lardner, the prestigious "white shoe" law firm at which she was a partner.
In a letter to clients Mitchell claimed there had been "a massive pressure campaign in the last several days mounted by leftist groups via social media and other means against me, my law firm, and clients of the law firm, because of my personal involvement with President Trump, his campaign and the White House," the Washington Examiner reports.
Mitchell has a long history of working against LGBTQ people, Democrats, and of working to gin up false claims of voter fraud, which often are attempts to disenfranchise minority groups. Ironically, Mitchell appeared at the White House alongside President Trump (photo) last August to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote – something her activism works to block.
She is the Chairperson of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), which Reuters reports said was part of a group "determined to push back on what she called a 'very well-planned-out assault' by Democrats and progressives to manipulate the system by attempting to change the rules on counting ballots after Election Day," which is false.
Foley & Lardner, ranked 59th among U.S. law firms, distanced itself from Mitchell after news broke of her involvement with Trump's possibly illegal phone call.
"We are aware of, and are concerned by, Ms. Mitchell's participation in the January 2 conference call and are working to understand her involvement more thoroughly," the firm said in a statement Monday.
By Tuesday she was gone from Foley & Lardner, which even scrubbed her bio from its online directory.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
Trump is asking Georgia voters to help GOP Senate candidates ... ›
A Republican group of fake Georgia 'electors' met to vote for Trump ... ›
Georgia Republicans 'scared' of Trump's upcoming visit as ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Donald's Trump bid to steal Georgia exacerbates GOP election ... ›
Trump's Georgia Call: Listen to the Audio and Read a Full Transcript ... ›
Trump Georgia Call Preceded by Fresh Lawsuit Over Election ... ›
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060690411
Where in the world is Scott Pruitt?
Kevin Bogardus, E&E News reporter Greenwire: Wednesday, July 3, 2019
A year ago this week, Scott Pruitt was spotted on the White House lawn for Fourth of July celebrations. By the following day, the then-EPA administrator was on his way out.
On July 5, 2018, President Trump announced on Twitter that he had accepted Pruitt's resignation. That was the culmination of months of headline-grabbing ethics scandals, forcing Pruitt from office and subsequently the public spotlight.
As the anniversary of his exit from EPA approaches, Pruitt — a longtime public figure in Oklahoma as state senator, attorney general and minor league baseball team co-owner — has taken on a more withdrawn persona.
The ex-EPA chief's past champions in Washington, D.C., have not been in touch with him.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in an interview last week that he hasn't spoken with Pruitt since around the time of his resignation from EPA.
"My answer to your question is I haven't talked to him since that time," Inhofe said.
For the past year, EPA observers have played a game of "Where's Waldo?" — replacing the bespectacled children's book hero with Pruitt.
Last fall, the former administrator was spotted at a Kentucky Coal Association meeting. In March, he spoke at the Dallas County Republican Party's annual Reagan Day Dinner in Texas. This April, he registered as a lobbyist in Indiana on behalf of a Hallador Energy Co. subsidiary in an effort to save coal power plants. And he has been consulting for coal CEO Joseph Craft, The Washington Post reported.
One reporter even tweeted that Pruitt was seen on a treadmill in a Tulsa, Okla., gym.
"He just sort of disappeared after he resigned," said Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Energy and Environment, who said he last talked to Pruitt before he resigned. "He is doing what he is doing. He is keeping a low profile."
Pruitt resigned from EPA last July facing allegations that he had abused his public office. Andrew Wheeler, his deputy administrator, took over and was later confirmed by the Senate this February as head of the agency.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was a vocal critic of the former administrator.
"I fought his nomination as hard as I fought any nomination, and every now and then, I feel vindicated," Carper said about Pruitt.
Pruitt didn't respond to voicemails from E&E News for this story. An automatic reply from his email account — signed with a "blessings to you" valediction — said he is transitioning it to receive messages only from friends and family.
Cleta Mitchell, a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP and counsel to Pruitt, also didn't respond to questions.
Pruitt has seemingly sought to put the EPA chapter of his life behind him.
"Scott and Marlyn are doing well and moving forward with their lives," said Nick Garland, senior pastor of First Baptist Church Broken Arrow, in an email, referring also to Pruitt's wife. Pruitt and his family have attended the church for decades.
Garland was responding to an E&E News interview request for this story, which he declined.
==
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/climate/pruitt-coal-consulting.html
no lnx
wASHINGTON — Scott Pruitt, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency who championed deregulation of the fossil fuel industry, is in discussions to work as a consultant to the Kentucky coal mining tycoon Joseph W. Craft III.
Mr. Pruitt has remained largely out of the public eye since parting ways with the Trump administration in July under a cloud of ethics investigations into matters including his ties to fossil fuel industry executives with business before the agency.
Mr. Craft, the chief executive of Alliance Resource Partners and a major Republican donor, enjoyed a close relationship with the E.P.A. during Mr. Pruitt’s tenure. Mr. Craft met with Mr. Pruitt at least seven times in Mr. Pruitt’s first 14 months at the agency and in December provided him with courtside seats at a University of Kentucky basketball game, a school where Mr. Craft is a prominent supporter.
The former E.P.A. chief laid out his plans to develop a new consulting firm in one-on-one discussions with several executives during a Kentucky Coal Association meeting last week, according to industry officials familiar with Mr. Pruitt’s appearance and activities there. An executive with Mr. Craft’s company, Alliance Resources, confirmed the discussions in a statement Wednesday.
“Any discussions that occurred between Mr. Craft and Mr. Pruitt are preliminary, and do not involve him becoming an employee of Alliance Resource Partners,” said Heath Lovell, vice president for public affairs at Alliance, in the statement. “Obviously, any discussions would not involve lobbying the federal government.”
Under an ethics pledge imposed by President Trump, Mr. Pruitt would be barred from directly lobbying the E.P.A. for five years in any new role, but he would not be restricted from working as a private consultant advising the company on E.P.A. related matters or working on the state level to influence regulatory policy.
One of the two executives familiar with Mr. Pruitt’s plans said that he would not be lobbying the federal government and would “not do anything inconsistent with his legal and ethical requirements.”
Mr. Pruitt, whose tenure at E.P.A. was marked by secrecy and security, did not publicize his speech to the Kentucky Coal Association, and the trade organization did not list him on its website among its featured speakers. Tyler White, the president of the association, acknowledged Mr. Pruitt’s presence at the event after it was pointed out that he was photographed sitting with Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky.
The association invited Mr. Pruitt “because we strive to provide our membership with high quality speakers who have unique experience, knowledge or expertise on issues impacting our industry,” Mr. White said in a statement. “Also, as a native Kentuckian, we were especially proud to have him speak,” he said. Mr. White said Mr. Pruitt had not been paid to address the meeting.
His remarks there were among the first public comments Mr. Pruitt has made since leaving the Trump administration. Coal industry officials as well as some Oklahoma political leaders said they welcomed his re-entry into the regulatory arena.
“It makes sense,” said Dewey F. Bartlett Jr., an oil executive and former mayor of Tulsa. “I know Joe Craft and the coal industry feel that they’ve been unfairly targeted by the E.P.A. and the various regulators, either state or federal, that oversee the coal mining industry. So working with a person like Scott Pruitt — who has given them, from their perspective, a fairer regulatory environment than the previous administration — would be a good fit.”
Democrats and environmentalists criticized Mr. Pruitt’s new role, while saying they weren’t surprised.
“Scott Pruitt has always been doing the dirty work for coal millionaires,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “The only difference is now he’ll be paid by them directly rather than ripping off the taxpayer.”
Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who represented Mr. Pruitt while he was at the E.P.A., did not return emails or phone calls seeking comment.
Both Mr. Craft and Mr. Pruitt are originally from Kentucky and later moved to Oklahoma, where Mr. Pruitt served in the state legislature and then as the state attorney general before he was nominated to take over the E.P.A. Alliance Resources is based in Tulsa, Okla.
As attorney general, Mr. Pruitt sought to protect the coal industry and coal-burning power plants from federal regulation. Mr. Craft was a financial supporter of Mr. Pruitt’s political causes. After Mr. Pruitt joined the E.P.A., he continued to advance policies that benefited the coal industry.
Separately on Wednesday, the E.P.A. made public a long-delayed financial disclosure report for Mr. Pruitt covering 2017. That period includes the time when Mr. Pruitt was living in a Capitol Hill condominium that he was renting from the spouse of an energy lobbyist for $50 a night, an arrangement that triggered one of several investigations into his actions and oversight at the agency.
The 2017 financial disclosure form does not list the Capitol Hill condo as a gift, a step that some suggested Mr. Pruitt might take, based on the widely held view that he was paying below market value for the unit. (Previously, Mr. Pruitt has denied that it was a below-market-value arrangement.)
At the time of the rental, Mr. Pruitt was the target of lobbying by the spouse of the condo’s co-owner, J. Steven Hart. Until earlier this year, Mr. Hart was the chairman of the Williams & Jensen lobbying firm.
The form does appear to address the condo question indirectly. The document states that Mr. Pruitt was aware of allegations that “certain actions or activities during 2017” may constitute gifts that require inclusion in the disclosure report. “To the extent that I am aware of specific allegations, I dispute the facts asserted and, accordingly, am not aware of reportable gifts,” the document says. “In the event that there are any future findings to the contrary, I will address the issue at that time and amend this report as directed and/or as necessary.”
Mr. Pruitt could not be reached for comment and Ms. Mitchell did not respond to questions about the former administrator’s financial report.
The 2017 financial disclosure report (which covers only last year, not the part of 2018 when Mr. Pruitt still led the E.P.A.) also shows that Mr. Pruitt’s wife, Marlyn Pruitt, earned between $15,000 and $50,000 over that time working as a consultant. During his time at the agency, Mr. Pruitt had asked senior aides to help his wife find employment as a consultant, which they did, helping her secure paid work for a conservative judicial group and New York nonprofit organization.
Mr. Pruitt’s requests to staff members to help his wife find work are the subject of investigations into his management of the E.P.A.; asking federal government aides to help with personal financial matters may be a violation of federal rules.
The 2017 financial disclosure also lists as much as $300,000 in legal fees from two law firms, debts Mr. Pruitt did not have previously, and that likely reflect his need to hire legal assistance after he became the subject of investigations into his oversight and actions at the E.P.A.
Mr. Pruitt in the past has denied allegations of any wrongdoing. In his resignation letter to Mr. Trump he wrote, “the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us.”
The former E.P.A. administrator’s next career steps have been the source of interest particularly in Oklahoma, where he is seen as a potential candidate for the United States Senate or to be governor.
==
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-teams-up-with-james-okeefe-in-dark-money-operation-to-protect-trump/
Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a right-wing political activist, has launched a new set of organizations meant to “protect President Trump” and attack Democrats and left-leaning organizations, according to an article published by The Intercept this week.
The well-connected Thomas, a former Heritage Foundation staffer, presented her plans to build a “robust infrastructure” to a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy last month. The CNP is a strategy-development-and-sharing network that includes leaders across the U.S. religious and political Right, including people like neo-Confederate Christian Reconstrucionist Michael Peroutka. CNP members pushed Trump to sign an executive order on religious liberty.
Thomas is planning to build a “robust infrastructure” of affiliated organizations. Among her partners in the new project are longtime right-wing operative Richard Viguerie; undercover videographer and political trickster James O’Keefe; Republican campaign lawyer Cleta Mitchell;and Bill Meierling, chief marketing officer for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a matchmaker for corporate lobbyists and conservative legislators willing to do their bidding.
A slide from Thomas’s presentation at Council for National Policy notes, “Long Term teams taking shape will focus on Education, Media, Entertainment/Arts, Faith, Corporate/Economic, Government, Science, and more”—nearly identical to the list of spheres of cultural influence targeted by Religious Right proponents of Seven Mountains Dominionism.
The Intercept also reported that Thomas had spoken at another CNP event last October, at which she declared, “The hard left is in control of the Democrat Party … And they’re controlling the media and corporations and Hollywood and education.”
This January, Thomas organized a White House meeting where she was joined by anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney and others where, among other things, they complained that White House aides were blocking right-wing Trump supporters from getting administration jobs.
Thomas and many of her partners were among conservative activists who mobilized a year ago to try to replace then-House Speaker Paul Ryan with right-wing favorite Rep. Jim Jordan.
Thomas presented United in Purpose “Impact” awards to O’Keefe, Gaffney, and Sean Hannity in 2017. In 2016, TPM reported that Thomas “wanted to ‘target’ the ‘most questionable’ precincts in Virginia with an anti-voter fraud campaign.”
Thomas also interviewed right-wing radio host Jesse Lee Peterson for the Daily Caller in 2016. The two talked about what Thomas called “race hustlers” who she said are “in the business of keeping blacks angry” and about Black Lives Matter, which Peterson called “evil,” “wicked,” and “worse than the KKK.” Last year, Thomas reportedly hired a former Turning Point USA staffer who had resigned after The New Yorker published screenshots of text messages that included a text that said “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/10/paul-manafort-lawyer-mysterious-payment-hidden-chapter-of-trump-2016-campaign.html
Recent court filings are shedding new light on a mysterious $125,000 payment to lawyers for Paul Manafort, paid by a firm that has not been identified until now.
The firm is called Multi Media Services Corporation, and its silent owner is Tony Fabrizio, a longtime Manafort associate and the chief pollster on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The route this money traveled, from its origin as a donation made to a pro-Trump political group, to its final destination in the bank account of Manafort’s attorney, offers a window into relationships Manafort built over decades. ...Recent court filings from special counsel Robert Mueller shed new light on a mysterious payment to lawyers for Paul Manafort, the onetime chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The payment, for $125,000, was made in June 2017, halfway through Trump’s first year in office. But it wasn’t disclosed publicly until late last year, when prosecutors accused Manafort in court filings of repeatedly lying to them about where the money actually came from. Manafort was convicted in 2018 of tax evasion and bank fraud, and sentenced in Virginia on Thursday to 47 months in prison. He faces another sente... In the world of presidential campaign fundraising, where millions of dollars are often raised and spent in a matter of weeks, $125,000 can seem like a drop in the bucket.
But the route this money traveled, from its origin as a donation made to a pro-Trump political group, to its final destination in the bank account of Manafort’s attorney, offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of relationships Manafort built over 40 years in Republican politics.
These relationships have drawn fresh scrutiny in recent weeks. Both Manafort and another key figure in this story, Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, were among 81 individuals and entities that received formal document requests on Monday from the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating a broad range of potential presidential misdeeds.
The path taken by this $125,000 also highlights the ways that Manafort took advantage of the Trump campaign’s underdeveloped leadership structure to install his allies in top positions across the Trump political landscape.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the murky, loosely regulated world of super PACs and other political “dark money” groups, which are permitted to raise unlimited amounts of money from donors as long as they don’t “coordinate” directly with campaigns, a legal standard that leaves plenty of room for interpretation. In this world, Manafort’s longtime associates could hold key positions, and oversee the raising and spending of huge sums of money, often with little to no direct oversight.
One of these positions was leading a pro-Trump super PAC that Manafort helped to establish in June 2016 calledRebuilding America Now.
To run the group, Manafort tapped an old friend, Connecticut-based lobbyist Laurance “Laury” Gay. A former official in President Ronald Reagan’s administration, Gay went on to work at Manafort’s lobbying firm in the late 1980s. He is also the godfather to one of Manafort’s daughters.
With Manafort’s blessing and Gay at its helm, Rebuilding America Now raised more than $24 million between June and December 2016, more than any other pro-Trump super PAC did during the entire election.
According to the transcript from a Feb. 4 hearing in Manafort’s trial, prosecutors believe that in 2017, Rebuilding America Now under Gay’s leadership also played a central role in what they describe as a “scheme” to provide Manafort with “a way of getting cash” out of his time as the unpaid chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The payment
Manafort’s decision to take a volunteer job at the top of Trump’s presidential campaign drew national attention to his lobbying career. By the summer of 2017, Manafort was the target of multiple investigations into his personal finances, campaign work and foreign lobbying.
Faced with mounting legal bills, Manafort reached out to Gay in June of that year and asked him to arrange a $125,000 payment to Manafort’s lawyers, according to both prosecutors and Manafort’s defense attorneys. Rather than give Manafort the money himself, however, Gay called someone else.
“At the request of Paul Manafort, Laury [Gay] asked that funds be forwarded to an entity designated by Mr. Manafort to assist with his legal expenses,” said Anthony J. Iacullo, a criminal defense attorney who represents Gay, in a recent interview with The New York Times.
It’s not clear why Manafort asked for this specific amount. In an emailed response to CNBC, Iacullo said Gay “has not been charged with any wrongdoing nor has he done anything that violates any federal or state laws.” He added that “out of an abundance of caution and respect for the process itself, we decline to comment any further at this time.”
CNBC attempted to reach Gay several times, but the phone at Gay’s Canaan, Connecticut-based consulting firm, Business Strategies & Insight, had been disconnected.
In order to get the $125,000, Gay reached out to someone else, whose name is redacted in court filings. Prosecutors described the person as having “a long relationship” with Manafort. Manafort’s defense attorneys said the person had “been a vendor on all these campaigns [Manafort has] used in the past.”
Crucially, in a January court filing the special counsel also noted that this person ran a firm that had been paid “approximately $19 million” by the super PAC that Gay was running in 2016.
There is only one firm that received anything near $19 million from Rebuilding America Now. And reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show that this firm received almost exactly $19 million, leaving little doubt about which firm it was that prosecutors were referring to.
It is a political ad-buying firm called Multi Media Services Corporation, or MMSC, based in Alexandria, Virginia.
At first glance, MMSC appears to be a small, two-man shop with no obvious ties to Manafort or anyone else with whom Manafort has “a long relationship.” Moreover, there are no signs that either of the principals at MMSC was ever “a vendor on all these campaigns [Manafort has] used in the past,” which is how Manafort’s lawyers described the person who ran this firm.
But there is more to MMSC than meets the eye. Interviews and corporate records unearthed by CNBC have revealed that MMSC has a silent owner: Tony Fabrizio, a longtime Manafort associate and the chief pollster on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Fabrizio’s dual role as: a) the owner of MMSC, which was the biggest vendor to the top pro-Trump super PAC, Rebuilding America Now, and b) the Trump campaign’s lead pollster, has not been reported until now.
As for the source of the $125,000, CNBC has also uncovered a compelling detail buried in one of the hundreds of exhibits that Mueller’s prosecutors have entered into the record in the case against Manafort in Washington.
This one appears to be a bank transfer record of the payment itself.
Under the heading “Debit Information” there is a line on the transfer record that reads “Account: MMSC SECONDARY - *7107* - Checking - $132,087.56.”
Again, MMSC is the acronym for Multi Media Services Corporation. Two political operatives who spoke to CNBC referred to the firm by its acronym.
CNBC tried repeatedly over several weeks to reach Fabrizio, but he did not respond to emails or phone messages left for him.
To be clear, at no point in any publicly available filings does Mueller suggest that Fabrizio or MMSC committed any crimes. On the contrary, details that appear to have been provided by Fabrizio are cited frequently as evidence of Manafort’s alleged misdeed: lying to prosecutors about the source of the $125,000.
Manafort’s lawyers deny that he lied. They told the court that he was merely confused or misremembered during each of the three interviews where he told the government three different stories about where the money came from.
Legal experts also told CNBC that there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with what Fabrizio appears to have done, namely, use money from a firm he controls to make a payment on someone else’s behalf.
In addition to Fabrizio, Manafort and Gay, CNBC also reached out to former Rebuilding America Now political director Ken McKay, former general counsel Cleta Mitchell and finance director Christina Culver. None responded to emailed questions about the group or about their work for it.
The connection between Fabrizio, Manafort and the money sent to Manafort’s lawyers from MMSC is only the latest chapter in a relationship between the two men that dates back more than 20 years.
Fabrizio’s role
In 1996, Fabrizio and Manafort worked together on the failed presidential campaign of former Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole. Then, as in 2016, Manafort was initially brought on board to manage the delegates at the 1996 Republican National Convention, while Fabrizio worked as the Dole campaign’s pollster.
Since then, Fabrizio has also done work for some of Manafort’s most controversial clients. In 2012 and 2013, foreign lobbying records show that Manafort paid Fabrizio $278,000 for work Fabrizio did to help Manafort’s political clients in Ukraine.
Fabrizio’s role in Manafort’s Ukrainian lobbying wasn’t revealed until a year after Trump was elected, however, when Manafort was required to file a foreign agent registration form with the Justice Department. On it, he listed five separate payments to Fabrizio, as well as payments to various other subcontractors.
Three years after they worked together on the Ukraine job, Manafort hired Fabrizio again, in May 2016, this time to work for the Trump presidential campaign.
At the time, Fabrizio’s hiring was greeted with fanfare in Republican circles, where it was viewed as a sign that Trump’s chaotic, bare-bones primary operation was maturing into a national presidential campaign, one capable of taking on the massive machine backing Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, the fact that Trump had hired a pollster at all was newsworthy, coming, as it did, after months of the candidate insisting that political pollsters were a waste of money.
“One of Paul Manafort’s best decisions was hiring Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio to determine how to beat Hillary Clinton,” wrote Roger Stone, a longtime friend of Manafort’s, Trump’s and Fabrizio’s, in his 2017 book, “The Making of a President.”
“In the end, it was the pugnacious and bulldog-like Fabrizio who insisted that the Trump campaign had to expand the map into Wisconsin and Michigan, while doubling down on Pennsylvania,” Stone wrote.
Stone was arrested earlier this year on charges that included lying to Congress about his contacts in 2016 with Wikileaks, which published thousands of emails allegedly stolen from the Clinton campaign by Russian state hackers.
Two weeks after Manafort hired Fabrizio to poll for the campaign, Manafort and longtime Trump ally Tom Barrack set up the Rebuilding America Now super PAC so they could raise millions at a time from wealthy GOP donors to help Trump, who was reportedly growing tired of spending his own money to fund his campaign.
Five days after Rebuilding America Now was formed on June 2, campaign finance records show that it made its first payment to MMSC, Fabrizio’s ad-buying firm, for a $1 million ad buy. According to prosecutors, Rebuilding America Now hired MMSC “at Manafort’s suggestion.”
The rapid succession of these hirings — first Manafort to chair the campaign, then Fabrizio to poll for the campaign, then Gay to run Rebuilding America Now, then Fabrizio’s ad-buying firm to buy the airtime for Rebuilding America Now — offer a striking example of how Manafort turned his unpaid role on the Trump campaign into an opportunity to secure lucrative work for his longtime associates.
In hindsight, however, this work appears to have come at a high cost to those who did it.
On March 4, Fabrizio was one of more than 80 members of Trump’s extended political and professional orbits to receive a formal letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. In it, Nadler wrote that the committee is investigating “allegations of obstruction of justice, public corruption, and abuses of power” by Trump and those around him.
According to the letter, the documents Nadler’s committee is seeking from Fabrizio include anything related to “discussions or attempts to provide or receive election information, campaign data, or campaign communications with, to, or from foreign entities or individuals in connection with the 2016 U.S. Presidential primary or general elections.”
The letter goes on to say: “this includes, but is not limited to, voter data, polling information, political ad targeting, voter registration rolls, social media data, and campaign or party e-mails.”
The special counsel’s interest in hearing from Fabrizio predates the Judiciary Committee’s letter by more than a year, however. In early February 2018, Fabrizio was seen by CNN leaving the special counsel’s office in Washington. The network later confirmed that he had been meeting with members of Mueller’s team.
More recently, court filings in the Manafort case also repeatedly mentioned another interview with an individual who appeared to be Fabrizio, this one conducted on Nov. 6, 2018.
Prosecutors said this individual provided accurate details about the $125,000 payment and how it was arranged, that they were later able to corroborate with text messages and bank records.
The individual also described a financial relationship between MMSC and Rebuilding America Now that was more complicated than it initially appeared in the campaign finance reports that the super PAC submitted to the FEC.
Unusually high commission rates
According to the account of the individual who appears to be Fabrizio, Rebuilding America Now agreed to pay Fabrizio’s firm a surprisingly high commission rate, 6 percent, on its media buys during Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The reason for this above-average rate, the person said to prosecutors, was that “half the commission was to be provided to” the head of Rebuilding America Now, in this case, Gay. They also said the commission split “was not reflected in the written contract” between MMSC and Rebuilding America Now.
This wasn’t the first time that questions had come up about the commission rates Rebuilding America Now was paying for its ad buys.
During the 2016 presidential race, potential donors to the PAC also reportedly questioned the rates, along with other elements of Rebuilding America Now’s spending.
“The main question is where the money is going,” an attendee at a Rebuilding America Now fundraising meeting during the Republican National Convention told CNN in the summer of 2016. During that meeting, specific questions were also raised “about the super PAC’s commission rates,” the attendee said.
Commission rates on political ad buys are particularly difficult to track, because campaigns and groups like Rebuilding America Now are not required to report them separately from the money they spend to air the ads themselves.
So, for example, if a super PAC reported an expense of $20 million paid to an ad-buying firm, it would be impossible to tell how much of that money went to the firm as commissions, and how much of it was actually spent to buy airtime.
But “if Gay and Rebuilding America Now knew that 3 percent of all commissions paid to Multi Media Services Corporation would be routed back to Gay, those transactions should have been reported to the FEC as payments to Gay” and not merely as commissions to MMSC, said Brendan Fischer, director of the federal reform program at the nonprofit watchdog group The Campaign Legal Center.
Federal campaign finance law requires that PACs, like political campaigns, accurately report their expenditures to the FEC.
“If a payment is made to one vendor with the intention that it be directed to another person or subvendor, and that recipient isn’t disclosed, then the committee has violated the law” by failing to disclose their expenditures accurately, Fischer said.
Gay’s attorney declined to respond to questions about the commission split from CNBC, as did Fabrizio.
But the alleged existence of a secret commission split wasn’t the only thing about the relationship between MMSC and Rebuilding America Now that experts said raises questions about where donors’ money was actually ending up.
Unusual reimbursements
In May 2017, six months after Trump had won the presidency and Rebuilding America Now had stopped buying ads on TV, campaign finance records show that Fabrizio’s ad-buying firm, MMSC, made three large cash transfers to Rebuilding America Now.
The first was on May 27, for $150,000, according to campaign finance records, which detail all these payments and their dates, sources, amounts and recipients. Three weeks later, on June 15, MMSC again transferred money to its former client, only this time it was a much larger amount: $625,000. The very next day, June 16, it transferred $25,000 to Rebuilding America Now, for a total of $800,000 from the ad-buying firm to the super PAC in a little under a month.
And not just any month. This was the month leading up to the mysterious $125,000 payment to Paul Manafort’s attorneys. That payment, from the account labeled MMSC - Secondary, occurred on June 26, precisely 10 days after the third and last payment from the firm to the PAC.
Records show that Rebuilding America Now reported the $800,000 it received in May and June as media reimbursements. This helps to explain why the money does not appear to have raised any red flags so far with the FEC, even though several other aspects of the PAC’s finances have prompted the FEC to formally request additional information or corrections.
Ad-buying firms frequently reimburse clients after elections for any money that doesn’t ultimately get spent by the firm on ads. This payment is called a reconciliation, and it’s usually made as soon as possible, and it’s precise down to the dollar, said Barbara Kittridge, the founder of Motive LLC, a political media-buying and strategy firm in Washington.
“January is what we media buyers call ‘audit season,’ where we go back through all our ad contracts from the previous year and carefully match the money that was paid with the actual ads that were run. If there’s any money that wasn’t spent, it’s returned to the client right away,” she said.
“Typically, ad-buying contracts require that reconciliations be paid somewhere between 15 and 45 days after the end of either the campaign or the calendar year. Six months is some of the longest I’ve ever seen for a repayment,” Kittridge said.
“It’s also odd to see even numbers” like $150,000 and $25,000 in ad reconciliations, she added. “Depending upon the channel that you’re purchasing ads on, it’s not typical that your costs are that even.”
Interestingly, several months before MMSC returned exactly $800,000 to Gay’s super PAC in the summer of 2017, campaign filings show that the firm made a different reimbursement payment to Rebuilding America Now, one that Kittridge said looked much more like a typical ad reconciliation than the later amounts did.
On Feb. 10, 2017, five weeks after the end of the fourth quarter, MMSC transferred $347,505 back to its client, Rebuilding America Now. Campaign legal experts said the transfer matches what media reconciliations typically look like, because it happened quickly and it was for a very precise amount.
“This reimbursement would be more normative, from both a timing perspective and from an amount perspective,” said Kittridge.
Yet the same qualities that make the February payment appear run-of-the-mill, experts said, are what make the May and June payments look so unusual.
“Six months after the election, with big round numbers, are definitely more suspect,” Kittridge said.
“I have never seen such large reimbursement payments coming so long after the election for which the ads were created. It strains credulity well beyond the breaking point to believe that these payments are reimbursement for unaired general election ads,” said a campaign finance lawyer who has been practicing before the FEC for 30 years, and who requested anonymity to discuss an issue that could come before the commission.
CNBC attempted to reach Fabrizio, as well as MMSC’s president, Dwight Sterling, and its media director, Neal McDonald, for several weeks to ask them about these unusual reimbursements. None responded to phone messages or emails.
Yet one thing is clear from the PAC’s financial reports: In the year that followed these three unusual cash transfers from Fabrizio’s firm to Rebuilding America Now, no one took home more of that money from the PAC, in consulting fees and expenses, than Laurance Gay.
Gay’s role
Gay first entered Trump’s orbit in April 2016 as a high-level campaign volunteer, one of several lobbyists Manafort recruited to help him professionalize the Trump campaign as it became increasingly likely Trump would be the Republican nominee. But Gay and Manafort’s professional relationship dates back to long before there was ever a Trump campaign.
In the 1980s, Gay worked with Manafort and Stone at their lobbying firm, Black, Stone, Manafort & Kelly. Gay is also reportedly the godfather to one of Manafort’s daughters.
During the 2016 campaign, Gay touted his personal and professional relationship with Manafort as one of the major assets Rebuilding America Now had that other pro-Trump super PACs did not.
“The advantage that we bring, without compromising any of the boundaries, is we know how Manafort thinks. I’ve done over 40 campaigns with Paul,” Gay told Politico in the summer of 2016.
For Gay, his relationship with Manafort would also prove to be extremely lucrative. Between June 2016 and June 2018, Gay collected just over $1 million in consulting fees from Rebuilding America Now.
More than three-quarters of that, a total of $775,000, was paid to Gay after 2016, and after Rebuilding America Now had shed staff and stopped running TV ads for Trump.
During that same two-year period, Gay collected another $254,000 in travel reimbursements from the super PAC. Again, the majority of this money, $149,164.03, came after 2016 was over.
Added together, the expenses and fees that Gay took home from Rebuilding America Now in the 18 months after 2016 equaled $924,164.03. This is very close to the combined total of $925,000 that was paid to the super PAC and Manafort’s lawyers ($800,000 to the PAC plus $125,000 to Manafort’s lawyers) by Fabrizio’s firm, MMSC, in May and June 2017.
In June 2018, Rebuilding America Now’s travel expenses caught the attention of the FEC. In a letter to Rebuilding America Now’s treasurer, Ryan Call, the FEC asked him to explain the $42,286 the group had paid to Gay for “Travel” during the first three months of 2018. The FEC gave the group until Aug. 2, 2018, to reply, but so far it has not responded to the request.
By this point, more than a year after Trump was elected, Rebuilding America Now appeared to be operating as little more than a meme-posting operation on Facebook and Twitter, trying to engage Trump supporters with “Like if you agree!” style posts.
Facebook ad records show that in the spring and summer of 2018, Rebuilding America Now ran a series of ads on Facebook. They asked viewers to “Like” posts if, for instance, they “think Hillary [Clinton] should be behind bars,” and “think CNN sucks.”
Yet despite spending money to buy Facebook ads, to pay Gay $35,000 a month and to pay other consultants and lawyers, Rebuilding America Now effectively stopped raising any money after the 2016 election, and only spent money.
Between June 2017, when the PAC received the last of the three unusual transfers from MMSC, to October 2018, when Palm Beach real estate developer Llwyd Ecclestone gave the group $25,000, campaign finance records show that Gay did not raise any money at all.
Ecclestone’s gift came long after the PAC had effectively gone dormant. He did not respond to an email from CNBC on Friday asking what prompted him to donate $25,000 to the group more than two years after he had last given it any money and months after Rebuilding America Now had stopped doing anything more than posting photos online.
Now, it barely even does that. Rebuilding America Now’s Twitter account posted its last tweet on Oct. 10, 2018. And the PAC’s website was taken down sometime in the fall, although it is difficult to tell precisely when.
As of March 6, the Rebuilding America Now Facebook page was still active, however, and it linked to the nonexistent website. CNBC sent a message to the Facebook page but has received no response.
While the name of Rebuilding America Now may have faded from the pro-Trump political landscape, Gay’s name has re-emerged in the news in recent weeks. This time it is in connection with a different pro-Trump entity that is currently under investigation: Trump’s presidential inaugural committee, or PIC.
Bloomberg News recently identified Gay as having been in charge of the ticketing operation for Trump’s inaugural events. This appeared to be the first time Gay had been identified by name as having had an official role in Trump’s inauguration.
“Gay didn’t have any known experience managing invitations, according to three people familiar with his role,” Bloomberg reported.
Prosecutors in both New York and New Jersey have reportedly opened preliminary investigations into Trump’s inaugural committee, including whether foreign nationals who attended inaugural events made prohibited donations to the committee by using “straw man” donors to hide their participation.
Gay was not the only member of Manafort’s inner circle working on core elements of Trump’s inauguration. Manafort’s longtime right-hand man, Rick Gates, was the deputy chairman of the inaugural committee, working directly under Barrack, the inaugural committee’s billionaire chairman.
The revelation that Gay was working alongside Gates at the inaugural committee serves as yet another example of how far Manafort’s reach into the Trump campaign continued to extend, months after Manafort himself had been fired from the campaign in August.
Gates was indicted in late 2017 along with Manafort, and charged with failing to disclose foreign lobbying and tax evasion. He has since pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and lying to the FBI, and he has cooperated with prosecutors and testified against Manafort in court.
Gay’s attorney declined to comment in response to questions from CNBC about Gay’s work for the inaugural committee.
He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. The charges against Stone are unrelated to the Manafort prosecution, nor do they have anything to do with Fabrizio or Gay.
==
4/15 superpac
Mike Snyder, a locally famous ex-anchorman for Dallas-Fort Worth’s NBC station, was running media strategy. Janeé Hill, a motivational speaker, handled outreach.
Randy Hill, Janeé’s husband, was hired to be the PAC’s executive director. Along with his business acumen – Hill once said his peanut transport system moved 80 percent of the nation’s crop – he was well connected. Then-Gov. Rick Perry had appointed him to the state’s emerging technologies committee.
Hill’s father had been Wal-Mart’s chief ethics officer, and was invited to join the PAC’s board. Gary Hill found the PAC’s patron to be “very eccentric.” When they first met, he recalled in an interview, Ken Davis told him the nametag on his sport coat was on the wrong side, ripped it off and fixed it onto the other side. But he joined the board anyway.
Patrick Davis, the group’s senior consultant, had the most political experience among the hires. He served as the political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2004 cycle and had helped run dozens of local, state and national campaigns.
Through his lawyer, Davis said he was attracted to the Fort Worth group because the national debt had long been an interest of his. And his style appealed to the oilman. He would often kick off conference calls by leading a prayer, asking for the Lord’s guidance in being responsible stewards of their patron’s money.
But very quickly, fissures appeared.
In his July memo to the board, Randy Hill alleged irregularities in Patrick Davis’ reimbursement requests. He wasn’t turning in receipts, Hill wrote, and some expenses didn’t track, such as a bill for an Iowa hotel stay that had been prepaid and a bill for a plane ticket even though Davis had driven to his destination.
Hill also questioned whether events organized by Davis were all they claimed to be. At an Iowa phone bank, Hill said, a caller admitted they were just “pretending to make phone calls” for the benefit of the campaign’s video cameras.
Hill was particularly concerned about Patrick Davis’ associate. She was combative with the rest of the staff and acting erratically, he said, so he began looking into her past.
Her name was Italia Federici. A decade earlier, Federici figured in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which contributed to the resignation of House Majority Leader Tom Delay and led to the criminal convictions of 21 people, including a House member who admitted taking bribes.
Federici was accused of using her position as head of a conservative environmental advocacy group to serve as intermediary between Abramoff and her friend, Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles. Abramoff funneled $500,000 to her group, offered her box seats to NFL games and paid for her meals and parties at his D.C. restaurant. In return, she allegedly exploited her romantic relationship with Griles to get Abramoff inside information and to lobby for his tribal clients.
When she testified before the Senate Indian Affairs committee, North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan accused her of being involved in “one of the most disgusting tales of greed and avarice” and mocked her denial of a quid pro quo: ”I come from a really small town, but I think I can spot a pretty big lie from time to time.”
Federici pleaded guilty in 2007 to tax evasion and obstructing a Senate investigation. She was given probation for her crimes and moved back to Colorado, where she’d lived before Washington.
There, her problems continued. The IRS accused her of being delinquent on more than $250,000, which her lawyer said was the result of a penalty assessed against her in connection with the Abramoff scandal. Her Boulder landlord told ProPublica she kicked her out for not paying several months of rent. “She doesn’t have clear boundaries between truth and fiction,” said the landlord, Diane Dvorin.
Through her attorney, Federici said she was truthful and moved out promptly after not being able to make rent.
In 2012, Federici and Patrick Davis met while working to promote Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign in Colorado. Davis had moved to Colorado and set up his own consulting firm after finishing his stint at the Republican senatorial committee.
Davis’ work was at times controversial after he left Washington. In 2008 he led a nonprofit that backed the presidential campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. It was blasted by other conservatives for allegedly making robo-calls to voters in multiple states that masqueraded as polls and suggested that a rival candidate, Sen. John McCain, “voted to use unborn babies in medical research.” The group was widely denounced, including by Huckabee’s campaign.
While he was working for Vote2ReduceDebt, Davis was also running the campaign of Annette Bosworth, a South Dakota physician making a bid for the Senate. Bosworth, who got 6 percent of the vote in the Republican primary last year, faces trial on a dozen felony counts of perjury and filing false statements in connection with allegedly forged names on nominating petitions.
Before Davis was running Bosworth’s campaign, records show he got paid a consulting fee by a PAC that boosted one of her opponents, a fact Bosworth’s attorney said was never disclosed to her.
Through his attorney, Davis said the relationship was disclosed, and that the calls on behalf of Huckabee were not push polls, but rather educational calls. The attorney said Davis had no knowledge of the alleged crimes committed by Bosworth.
In his July 2014 memo, Randy Hill asked for Davis and Federici to be fired.
The next day, Patrick Davis wrote a memo of his own to the board. In it, he alleged that after a June 5 Vote2ReduceDebt rally, as they drove to the Midland, Texas airport, Hill told him about a secret plan.
At the time, Hill was in talks with television executives to create a reality show about his quest to start a NASCAR racing team. He already had a website billing himself as “The Entrepreneur… Chasing the Dream,” encouraging visitors to follow along as he recruited a driver, sponsors and a spot on the racing circuit. He told colleagues this would be good publicity for the PAC – he’d emblazon his racecars with the Vote2ReduceDebt logo and take them on tour.
But Patrick Davis alleged that Hill took it a step further in their conversation. In order to start filming, Hill said, he needed to get a team together, and that required money he didn’t have. Hill missed his first deadline with NBC, and though he was granted an extension, time was running out.
By Davis’ account, Hill offered him a trade of sorts. He would make Patrick Davis “a character in his reality TV show.” And Patrick Davis would help Hill get $4 million out of the PAC: half a million for PAC promotions, and the rest going toward racing expenses including drivers and pit crews. Ken Davis, recently hospitalized, would be told the money was going towards legitimate get-out-the-vote operations.
In his memo, Patrick Davis wrote that he would never go along with such a scheme because it would have “required lying to Mr. Ken Davis which was something I was not going to do.”
The board and Ken Davis had to decide whom to believe. Patrick Davis warned the leadership that if they sided with Hill, they would risk future disaster. “In other cases where I’ve occasionally been ignored, clients have really created problems for themselves,” he wrote.
For her part, Federici began pressuring Snyder, who was in charge of media strategy, and the PAC’s attorney, Chris Gober, who was looking into the allegations. One evening in July, she sent Gober a barrage of text messages. She demanded he turn over video from a PAC event she believed would play in their favor. He emailed the texts the same evening to Ken Davis.
“SECURE THE EVIDENCE YOU’VE BEEN NOTIFIED FOR A MONTH EXISTS,” Federici texted in all caps, according to the email. “If you think I’m cowed in any way, think again. I will ferociously expose you and anyone else I feel is complicit in destroying documentation about the fleecing (of) this family.”
“Screw with this PAC at your peril…Who do you think you are?… If you want to sue me/us… Do it! Otherwise, do your fucking job and stop being Mike Snyder’s bitch.”
“WTF. I could care less about your Harvard ‘creds,’” she continued, even though the attorney said he didn’t respond. “Do. Your. Job. We asked for docs and recorded material weeks ago. How impotent are you? Or is it criminal. Your choice.”
In an interview, Hill said the reality TV show scam was a figment of Patrick Davis’ imagination, one that Davis fabricated to distract from his own fraud. He said the board decided to side with him, voting to fire Davis and Federici.
But he said he was called into Ken Davis’ office and berated.
“Nobody fires anybody until I tell ‘em to,” the oilman said, according to Hill.
That afternoon, Hill said, Patrick Davis flew in and met privately with Ken Davis. The next day Hill was fired.
Patrick Davis remained and his influence grew. According to records and interviews, he pushed for multiple six-figure payments to organizations run by him or his close associates.
He convinced the PAC to hire a Virginia company called ccAdvertising for calls to voters, at a price of about $230,000, records show. Davis’ attorney, Cleta Mitchell, said that Davis has a “long term business and personal relationship” with the company’s owner. Mitchell declined to respond to questions about whether Davis received personal benefit from the contract.
At least three of the outside companies Davis recommended to Vote2ReduceDebt were run by one of his business associates, Joel Arends, an attorney and political operative based in South Dakota. Davis and Arends have known each other for two decades through various Republican campaigns. Most recently, they had worked together on the South Dakota primary in which their candidate got indicted and blamed Arends for the allegedly falsified filings.
Italia Federici testifies during a Senate committee hearing on lobbying by Indian tribes in Nov. 2005. (AP Photo/Yuri Gripas)
Hill said that one proposal from Patrick Davis involved a cross-country bus tour using a company linked to Arends that was so obscure it didn’t have a website. On another occasion, Davis pushed for the PAC’s printing services to be handled by Arends. Davis said through his lawyer that he felt Arends would be faster and cheaper than other options.
Vote2ReduceDebt didn’t go with Patrick Davis’ suggestions on either of those jobs, but did heed his advice when choosing who to hire for a $200,000 contract to produce voter rallies. Davis again picked Arends, who ran a company called Red State Productions. Davis’s lawyer said in a statement that Red State “is a skilled political campaign services provider with years of experience and excellent results over many campaigns.”
While Arends had worked with campaigns in the past, Red State’s website, which displays photos of big political rallies featuring Republican stars such as Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, was created a couple of days before Red State pitched the $200,000 deal to Vote2ReduceDebt, domain registration records show. The company was incorporated in South Dakota a few days after the pitch.
Red State’s events, according to the website, “are widely attended, photographed and reported.” A search of online databases turned up no previous record of payments to Red State Productions by a candidate or political committee. The D.C. number for the company has since been disconnected. The address listed on its website is for a service on Washington’s K Street lobbying corridor that provides mail drops and temporary office space.
Vote2ReduceDebt staffers were not pleased with Red State’s work, according to a lawsuit the super PAC filed in December to get the money back. One of the firm’s main responsibilities was promoting rallies and getting people there. But most of the people who attended their rallies, the PAC alleged, were paid Vote2ReduceDebt staffers, with one rally only drawing seven outsiders.
Arends’ attorney did not respond to questions from ProPublica. His company has sued Vote2ReduceDebt for terminating the contract, and harming its reputation with future clients.
CLETA Mitchell, Davis’ attorney, said the events Red State organized were “very successful,” including one attended by more than 250 people and others that drew volunteers, elected officials and local activists.
Arends and Patrick Davis “are not in business together,” said Mitchell. Asked if Davis received a personal benefit from the work the PAC gave to Arends, Mitchell said: “If there were any business arrangements with any vendors, those arrangements would have been (and were) fully disclosed.”
Another move by Patrick Davis raised questions among some PAC colleagues. He secured payments of about $410,000 from Vote2ReduceDebt – roughly a seventh of the total funds raised by the super PAC - to another PAC, one he and Federici had created in 2013.
Until the payment from Vote2ReduceDebt, their PAC, called Person to Person, had almost no contributions or activities. According to an invoice, other internal records and a person with knowledge of the transactions, the money was paid in expectation of a service: Person to Person would recruit 320 volunteers for door-knocking and phone work in Vote2ReduceDebt’s eight target states.
But Patrick Davis reported the money to the FEC as a contribution, not a fee for service. According to Noble, the former FEC attorney who reviewed the filings for ProPublica, that distinction allowed Person to Person to do whatever it wanted with the money and pay no taxes on it.
Person to Person quickly began spending its windfall. According to federal disclosure records compiled by the OpenSecrets website, more than $115,000 has gone to Red State Productions and Patrick Davis’ consulting company.
In October, Vote2ReduceDebt parted ways with Davis. By then, records show, the super PAC had paid more than $875,000 – almost a third of its total spending – to companies and organizations owned or operated by Davis and Federici or their associates.
Both declined to be interviewed by ProPublica. In a recent interview with a conservative commentator for the Daily Caller, they said they are preparing the Person to Person PAC for the 2016 cycle. The host asked Patrick Davis if he believes that some conservative groups exist not to affect elections but to bilk donors.
“There is a problem, but Person to Person PAC is not participating in the problem,” Davis said.
Federici directed listeners to the group’s website, where they could log on and donate.
Mitchell, Patrick Davis’s lawyer, denied that Davis and Federici falsified reimbursement requests, faked phone banking events or were dishonest with Vote2ReduceDebt staff.
In fact, Mitchell described Federici as a whistleblower who took on dishonest employees within the PAC. She described one instance in which a PAC state director with a suspended license was secretly using one of the group’s employees as a chauffeur for five weeks.
“One lesson Tali learned from the experience of being dragged into the Abramoff mess was to be very cautious and to ask questions,” Mitchell said. “That was in large part what led her to blow the whistle… before a problem was created and funds were misused.”
Mitchell said Patrick Davis still does not understand why Vote2ReduceDebt terminated his consulting contract. “Had Person to Person PAC been allowed to complete the deployment project,” she said, it would have “met and exceeded” its promised volunteer numbers. Mitchell said Patrick Davis was correct in reporting the money as a contribution, and it was Vote2ReduceDebt that reported the payment incorrectly.
The breakdown of his super PAC has left Ken Davis with some ambivalence about entering election politics.
In a brief interview, he declined to discuss the allegations that he had been duped. He did acknowledge that he may have been in over his head and that he’s not sure the group had the impact he desired.
“I’m convinced there’s a lot of people that jumped into politics with the idea that they’re gonna make a change in the world and they’ve found out it ain’t that easy,” Davis said. “Just because you think it’s needed doesn’t mean you can make it happen.”
Help us investigate: Have a tip about campaign finance? Email robert.faturechi@propublica.org.
==
congr test voter id with cj adams and bs okeefe video
The Constitution Subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing this week that illustrated just how far from reality the advocates of photo IDs, and other methods of suppressing votes, will go to peddle their phony message that voter fraud is rampant in America and must be stopped by enacting legislation that disenfranchises legitimate voters.
The first indication that these hearings were an outright sham was the inclusion of a video by the notoriously dishonest crockumentary maker, James O’Keefe. O’Keefe is best known for producing videos that have been deliberately edited to give false impressions that advance his political agenda. His antics include plying teachers with alcohol in order to embarrass them, and attempting to seduce a CNN reporter aboard his “Love Boat.”
==
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/meet-cleta-mitchell-the-conservative-movements-anti-gay-eminence-grise/274629/
In 2011, a little-known group called GOProud was a sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual marquee event for the right. A staunchly right-wing, fiscally conservative group that also promoted a pro-life message, GOProud seemed like a great fit for the event. There was just one problem: GOProud's main function was as a gay-rights group.
Enter Cleta Mitchell.
Mitchell was, and is, on the board of the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC. After calls from angry social-conservatives who threatened to boycott the event if GOProud was allowed to remain as a sponsor, Mitchell orchestrated a push to expel GOProud. It wasn't initially successful -- the group remained as a sponsor that year
But after that the 2011 conference, Al Cardenas succeeded David Keene as ACU president. With Mitchell's support, he called a vote of the board on whether or not GOProud should be allowed in CPAC. The board voted strongly in favor of banning the group.
GOProud has been absent ever since. This isn't to say the decision has been universally popular at CPAC -- indeed, an independent, unsanctioned panel at the convention center on welcoming gays into the movement that featured GOProud Executive Director Jimmy LaSalvia and conservative journalists Jennifer Rubin and Jonah Goldberg at this year's conference was packed with well-wishers -- but the ban has stuck.
Mitchell doesn't dispute her central role in the ban, but says she only did what was in the best interest of the conference, calling herself "the advocate of CPAC" and pointing out that participants in the boycott -- including Heritage, the grandfather of conservative groups, were too big to ignore. But some involved in the process say Mitchell's role went well beyond simple responsiveness. "She ginned up opposition from Jim DeMint and Jim Jordan and groups that had never really been involved in CPAC in order to make it look like [GOProud] deserved it," a key organizer of the 2011 confab told me. (A spokesman for DeMint said that is "simply false," and added that his decision not to speak at the conference was uninfluenced by Mitchell.)
What's more, the organizer points out, most of the groups that threatened to boycott 2011's CPAC didn't actually do so in the end, with Heritage a notable exception. "Even Focus on the Family continued to be at CPAC when GOProud was there," the organizer said. "CPAC 2011 made more money, had more cosponsors, and had more attendees than any previous CPAC. Even if Cleta's opposition to GOProud was based purely on profit, she was wrong."
Cleta Mitchell is not a household name, even among conservatives. She's part of the behind-the-scenes power-players that run the show in the Beltway. In addition to her role at the ACU, Mitchell sits on the board of the National Rifle Association and is a longtime attendee at Grover Norquist's infamous Wednesday planning meetings.
But first and foremost, Mitchell is lawyer to the stars of the conservative movement at Foley & Lardner, one of the biggest and most powerful firms in the country. Her clientele is the cream of the Republican crop: Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint, Kelly Ayotte, Jim Inhofe, and Pat Toomey, among many others.
What makes Mitchell's role as a prime mover and shaker in conservative circles so fascinating, however, is that she hasn't always been a conservative -- or even a Republican. In fact, she entered politics as a liberal Democrat in a red state. From 1976 to 1984 she served as a representative in the Oklahoma State House, where she became the first woman in the U.S. to chair a state appropriations and budget committee.
When Mitchell first dove into hot-button social issues, it wasn't as a defender of traditional values. She was a driving force behind the passage of Oklahoma's Equal Rights Amendment. The Oklahoma incarnation of the amendment was supported by then-president of the National Organization for Women Eleanor Smeal, who came to the state house in person to support the amendment. Conservative luminary Phyllis Schlafly, who helped kill the national version of the amendment, backed the opposition. These days, Schlafly is a mainstay of CPAC.
In 1978, Mitchell criticized Carter aide and women's-rights activist Midge Costanza, saying her views didn't go far enough: "I don't think she is sensitive to political reality. She doesn't know enough about where we are in the women's movement and the ERA."
Even amidst all this social activism, according to a lawyer who is a close friend of Mitchell's and fought for the ERA with her, Mitchell "never talked" to her about gay issues while she was in the legislature. And yet it was work to keep gay-rights groups out of events like CPAC has come to define her public image -- though Mitchell says "no one cares" about this aspect of her career -- rather than any of her prior social activism. It has also led GOProud's Chris Barron to once call her "a nasty bigot," and LaSalvia to accuse her of "personal animosity towards gay people."
Mitchell hasn't spoken at any length as to why she suddenly seemed to be a champion of these issues as of late -- and what brought her to the Beltway wasn't social issues or even fiscal issues but term limits (she was made head of the Term Limits Legal Institute in 1991) and most of her work since has focused on areas other than social policy. But her stance is ironic in light of her past.
Namely, her first husband was gay.
Mitchell married Duane Draper, who she met in the city of Norman in her home state of Oklahoma. In 1980, Draper moved to Massachusetts to take a teaching fellowship at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The couple divorced two years later in July 1982 on grounds of "incompatibility." (Mitchell's friend from the Oklahoma legislature, after hesitating, said she didn't feel comfortable discussing whether Draper's sexuality was a reason for the divorce.)
In 1988, Draper became director of the Massachusetts AIDS policy office. His interest wasn't just academic or humanitarian -- he himself contracted the disease. By the time he died of AIDS in 1991, Draper was living as an openly gay man. From his hospital bed, he told the Boston Globe that his support for AIDS victims and gay rights were two elements of a single mission to make life easier for "all AIDS people, especially gay men uncertain of how families, friends, and co-workers will take [their diagnosis]."
In 1984, Mitchell (nee Deatherage) married Dale Mitchell -- son of all-star left-fielder Dale Mitchell, who was the final strikeout in Don Larsen's 1956 World Series perfect game. As The Oklahoman noted at the time, Cleta Deatherage took her husband's last name, and in return he switched parties from Republican to Democrat -- even though she said after her retirement that she was finished with politics. But she couldn't resist the pull of elected office, and mounted an unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor in 1986.
Around the same time, the FBI began investigating Dale Mitchell for banking malpractice. In late 1992,he was convicted of five felony counts of conspiracy to defraud, misapplying bank funds and making false statements to banks and ordered to pay $3 million in restitution--something that his wife says convinced her that government had grown too big.
By 1996, she had changed her party affiliation to independent, later changing it to Republican.
As powerful as she is, Mitchell is wary of the press. When I first approached her to request an interview, she repeatedly speculated that I would write a "hit piece," and only agreed to speak on the condition there would only be one GOProud-related question. When I asked her in an email about ablogpost linking Draper's sexuality to the couple's divorce, she clammed up. "I think I'm finished talking about this with you -- it is a hit piece as I suspected from the start," she said. "Swing away!"
But maybe the reason Mitchell is so reticent to talk, particularly about gay marriage-related issues, is that when she starts on the issue, she has quite a bit to say. As BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner noted, she helped turn a panel on bullying at this year's CPAC into an anti-gay diatribe. Yet she professes ignorance of what GOProud actually does, calling them "nothing-burgers" and adding, "I have no idea what they do except promote the homosexual agenda."
Meanwhile, despite Mitchell's best efforts, gay rights are decisively on the march. Along with Supreme Court hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act last week, a steady stream of elected officials are embracing marriage equality -- including Republican Senators Mark Kirk and Rob Portman -- and it's hard not to wonder how and when the conservative establishment will adapt.
There are, of course, holdouts -- Ed Gillespie, who said on Fox News Sunday recently that he doesn't see the GOP changing its views on the definition of marriage, or Rick Santorum and other staunch social conservatives. But with people like Senator Jeff Flake saying that not only could he support a Republican candidate for president who endorsed gay marriage, but that such a Republican is "inevitable," RNC Chair Reince Priebus saying that the party should be more accepting of pro-gay marriage groups, and the rise of a more libertarian strain in the party, led by Ron and Rand Paul, the GOP faces either a policy switch or deep irrelevance.
Mitchell herself, ironically, offers a clear model of how people can change. What's not clear is whether the right as a whole is ready to emulate that model.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/meet-cleta-mitchell-the-conservative-movements-anti-gay-eminence-grise/274629/
just interviwed on NPR
corkery http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/11/wellsprings-flow.html
“Obviously donors could simply give money to the organizations they wanted to give to,” said law professor Donald Tobin of Ohio State University’s Moritz School of Law. “The idea of bundling it into a 501(c)(4) and then using that (c)(4) as a way to distribute money [to] other organizations is new, and I think is generally designed to help cleanse money through the system.”
As political activity by 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations and 501(c)(6) trade groups has increased, so have questions about whether they’re following the law. The IRS, which oversees them, says that such organizations can spend up to 49 percent of their resources on politics. What constitutes “politics” isn’t always clear. But the definition of “social welfare,” which is supposed to be the major purpose of (c)(4)s, is also problematic. Organizations like Wellspring consider their grants to other nonprofits to be social welfare, even when those groups are deeply involved in politics.
“The group is a conduit,” said Tobin. “The web of transactions…makes you question whether [Wellspring] is really engaged in a social welfare purpose or not.”
Wellspring’s lawyer is Washington, DC, campaign finance attorney Cleta Mitchell. She says Tobin might be “a lefty loony law professor,” and says it’s sometimes better to have one group to do fundraising and another to carry out programs.
Mitchell says, “It’s good for both. The fundraising and grant-making c4 doesn’t have to actually engage in the program operations, and the operating c4 doesn’t have to do a lot of separate fundraising.”
But the IRS has been silent on the matter, and the fact that money is fungible and usually can’t be followed through to a particular expenditure only muddies the waters.
Republicans Boast About Voter Suppression in Tampa, but the Ground Is Shifting
George Zornick on August 29, 2012 - 4:06 PM ET
On the first full day of the Republican National Convention in Tampa Bay, Republicans were not running from their record of voter suppression. At a fundraiser Tuesday afternoon not far from the Tampa Bay Times Forum, GOP superstars lined up to pay their respects to one of the key architects of recent voter-suppression tactics—Cleta Mitchell, a Tampa Bay–based attorney who is head of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Earlier this year, before the House Judiciary Committee, Mitchell proudly testified that the “burdens” of voter identification laws—that is, some people not being able to vote—were justifiable to prevent non-existent fraud. “Because the purpose of a voter identification, a photo identification, is to ensure and protect the integrity of the election, whatever burden may exist is offset by the need to protect the integrity of the elections,” she testified. And Mitchell is not a newcomer to the voter-suppression game—back in 2008, she was running “training sessions” for GOP poll-watchers so they could fight back against a supposed “long pattern of abuses in registration by groups such as ACORN and their Democratic allies.”
The guest list to her party included six Republican senators, including powerhouses Jim DeMint and Marco Rubio, as well as former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who would address the convention hours later. (I staked out the entrance to the party and didn’t see the A-listers enter, though they appeared to be coming in through a secure parking garage. I did, however, spot conservative columnist George Will and Grover Norquist coming in).
Later that night, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley got one of the biggest applause lines of the convention so far when she boasted about her voter-suppression achievements back home. “We said in South Carolina that if you have to show a picture ID to buy Sudafed and you have to show a picture ID to set foot on an airplane, then you should have to show a picture ID to protect one of the most valuable, most central, most sacred rights we are blessed with in America—the right to vote,” she said.
But Haley’s timing was awful—the ground beneath voter-suppression efforts is falling away, in her state and elsewhere. On the same day Haley spoke, a trial was underway in South Carolina in which the state is suing Obama’s Department of Justice for blocking the voter identification law. And it isn’t going so well for the state. (Ari Berman has excellent coverage here).
The bill’s author, state Representative Alan Clemmons, took the stand yesterday and admitted he cannot produce a single example of in-person voter impersonation, and also conceded his law wouldn’t really stop a dedicated impersonator anyhow. Then, one lawyer presented racist e-mails sent to Clemmons about voter-identification laws—with which Clemmons agreed. (Someone e-mailed Clemmons to denounce the idea that black voters wouldn’t sign up for photo identification if an incentive was offered, saying “it would be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon.” Clemmons replied, “Amen, Ed, thank you for your support,” a response he admitted in court yesterday was “poorly considered.”)
And just this morning, in Mitchell’s home state of Florida, a federal judge ruled that he would strike down one of the more pernicious Florida vote-suppression laws—one that restricted the ability of third-party groups to register voters. Republicans in the legislature passed laws that hurt Floridians’ ability to vote, all of which have now been halted: they shortened voting hours (which was blocked by a federal judge this month), attempted to purge voter rolls (also stopped by a court), and now the harsh restrictions on groups like the League of Women Voters and Project Vote have been lifted. These restrictions caused a huge imbalance in partisan voter registration—see this chart from The Rachel Maddow Show
That gap is likely to be closed dramatically now that third-party registration can resume.....
BS
Cleta Mitchell is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Foley & Lardner LLP and a member of the firm’s Political Law Practice. With more than 30 years of experience in law, politics and public policy, Ms. Mitchell advises corporations, nonprofit and issue organizations, candidates, campaigns, and individuals on state and federal campaign finance law, election law, and compliance issues related to lobbying, ethics and financial disclosure. Ms. Mitchell practices before the Federal Election Commission, the ethics committees of the US House and Senate and similar state and local enforcement bodies and agencies.
Ms. Mitchell has extensive experience on the federal lobbying and ethics law enacted by Congress in 2007, having taught more than a dozen seminars on the subject since its passage. In 2008, Ms. Mitchell authored The Lobbying Compliance Handbook, published by Columbia Books, Inc.
Ms. Mitchell represents numerous candidates, campaigns and members of Congress, as well as state and national political party committees. She has served as legal counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Ms. Mitchell served as co-counsel for the National Rifle Association in the Supreme Court case involving the 2002 federal campaign finance law.
Ms. Mitchell has testified before Congress on numerous occasions related to election law, campaign finance and lobbying and ethics laws, and is a frequent speaker and guest commentator on political law. In 1999, she authored "The Rise of America’s Two National Pastimes: Baseball and the Law," published by the University of Michigan Law Review.
Ms. Mitchell has been appointed to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law and has been appointed an advisor on the American Law Institute's Election Law Project entitled, “Principles of Election Law: Dispute Resolution.” She serves on the boards of directors of the National Rifle Association and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, is chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation, and is president of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Ms. Mitchell has been Peer Review Rated as AV® Preeminent™, the highest performance rating in Martindale-Hubbell's peer review rating system and was selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2010, 2011 and 2012 editions for her work in administrative/regulatory law. She was also named a "Top Lawyer" in Washington D.C. by the Washingtonian for her work in political and campaign law. For her work in government and political law, she is listed in Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers (2010 and 2011). Ms. Mitchell was a teaching fellow at the Institute of Politics, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1981 and was the Shapiro Fellow at the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University in 2001.
Ms. Mitchell was a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976-1984 where she chaired the House Appropriations and Budget Committee. She served on the executive committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Ms. Mitchell was in private law practice in Oklahoma City in litigation and administrative law until 1991 when she became director and general counsel of the Term Limits Legal Institute in Washington, D.C. She litigated cases in state and federal courts nationwide on congressional term limits and served as co-counsel with former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell in the U.S. Supreme Court case on term limits for members of Congress.
Ms. Mitchell received her B.A. (high honors, 1973) and J.D. (1975) from the University of Oklahoma. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, the State of Oklahoma, the Supreme Court of the United States and federal district and appellate courts.
Employer: Chair of the American Conservative Union Foundation, Attorney and Lobbyist with Foley & Lardner
Biography:
Cleta Mitchell served as a Democratic member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976-1984. At that time, Mitchell was considered a rising star in national Democratic politics, drawing comparisons to former Texas Governor Ann Richards. After leaving the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Mitchell divorced Duane Draper, her husband of nine years, citing incompatibility and entered into private practice as an attorney in Oklahoma [Draper, whose male companion was mentioned in his obituary, later served as director of AIDS programs for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health until this death from AIDS in 1991]. Moving to Washington, D.C. in the early 1990s, Mitchell became a high-profile election law attorney for Republican political candidates. Some of Mitchell’s past and present clients include Senator Elizabeth Dole, Senator Jim Inhofe, Senator David Vitter, Senator Roy Blunt, Representative Tom Cole, Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Joe Miller, and Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum.
C-SPAN
Controversial Actions and Statements:
On November 2, 2011, the Minnesota Independent reported that Mitchell would serve as the primary lobbyist for National Organization for Marriage’s campaign to ban gay marriage in Minnesota through a ballot initiative. In response to Mitchell’s lobbying activities, Human Rights Campaign dropped the law firm that employs Mitchell (Foley & Lardner) from a perfect score to one of the lowest on the organization’s Corporate Equality Index.
Gay Rights
Mitchell led opposition to a decision by the American Conservative Union (ACU) to allow GOProud, a gay conservative group, to participate in the 2011 CPAC conference. GOProud Board Chairman Chris Barron called Mitchell a “nasty bigot” in response to her efforts to shut out his organization.
Gay Rights
Mitchell served as an “attack attorney” for many Tea Party Congressional candidates during the 2010 elections, including Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller. She has suggested that the Democratic Party’s “tricks” include widespread engagement in voter fraud. Mitchell famously wrote a fundraising letter on behalf of Angle where she accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of attempting to steal the election. Mitchell also accused the Democratic party of stealing the 2002 South Dakota senate election, where Senator Tim Johnson was victorious over Senator John Thune. Both Angle and Miller have been involved in high-profile controversies surrounding guns and the Second Amendment.
Republican Party (GOP) |
In 2009, Mitchell spearheaded an initiative to overturn the legalization of gay marriage in the District of Columbia.
Gay Rights
Mitchell served as the attorney for the American Issues Project, a group that ran a television ad falsely accusing President Barack Obama of having a close personal relationship with former-Weather Underground member Bill Ayers in the months prior to the 2008 presidential election. Because AIP’s tax-exempt status makes it illegal for the organization to have a mission that is primarily political, the legality of the ad was questioned by elections experts. Laura MacCleery, Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, called the ad a “clear abuse of federal election law.” Fox News declined to air the spot.
In 2006, Mitchell appeared on MSNBC to defend a number of Republicans embroiled in ethical scandals. Of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Mitchell said, “Those allegations, the indictment against Tom DeLay, were completely politically motivated.” She then bet public relations strategist Cliff Schecter dinner that DeLay would not go to jail. In January 2011, DeLay was sentenced to three years in prison for money laundering.
Political Corruption | Republican Party (GOP) |
In May 2005, Mitchell served as the Master of Ceremonies at an ACU event honoring U.S. Representative Tom Delay (R-TX), who was embroiled in ethics investigations (and has since been convicted of money laundering). After telling those in attendance that she and other conservatives “love” DeLay, Mitchell claimed he was under investigation only because he is “effective.” She also declared, “The tribute is a statement to him: You're not alone. We'll stand by you. And it's to say to people in this town: If you pick a fight with him, you've got us to contend with.”
Political Corruption | Republican Party (GOP) |
wiki
Cleta Mitchell (born September 15, 1950[1]) is an American lawyer, politician and conservative activist.[2][3][4][5][6]
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Career
2 Bibliography
2.1 Press articles
2.2 Scholarly articles
2.3 Books
3 References
Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]
Cleta Mitchell was born as Cleta B. Deatherage in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1950.[7] She received a B.A. in 1973 and a J.D. in 1975, both from the University of Oklahoma.[2][3][4]
Deatherage married Duane Draper, a fellow Oklahoman from Norman, in 1973. In 1980, Draper moved to Massachusetts to take a teaching fellowship at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The couple divorced two years later in July 1982 on grounds of "incompatibility." Draper later came out as a gay man and became director of AIDS programming at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
In 1984, Cleta Deatherage married Dale Mitchell, who was the son of all-star Brooklyn Dodgers left-fielder Dale Mitchell. It the early 1980s, the FBI began investigating Dale Mitchell forbanking malpractice, and in 1992 he was convicted of five felony counts of conspiracy to defraud, misapplying bank funds and making false statements to banks, and ordered to pay $3 million in restitution. According to Cleta Mitchell, this is what convinced her that government had grown too big.[8]
Career[edit]
She served as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976 to 1984, as member of the Democratic Party.[1] She was the first woman in the United States to chair a House Appropriations and Budget Committee.[1][2][3][4][5] She served on the executive committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures.[2][3][4][5]
She is a partner at Foley & Lardner, a law firm headquartered in Washington, D.C..[2][3][4][5] She has served as legal counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and theNational Rifle Association.[2][3] She represents Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen.Pat Toomey (R-PA), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK).[4][5][6] She has also represented Tea Party candidates Sharron Angle and Joe Miller.[6] She refused to represent Christine O'Donnell because she couldn't afford her services.[6] She has been appointed to the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Election Law and as an advisor on the American Law Institute's Election Law Project entitled "Principles of Election Law: Dispute Resolution."[2][3]
She serves on the Board of Directors of the Bradley Foundation.[2][3][4][9] She also serves on the Board of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Conservative Union Foundation.[2][3][4][10] She sits on the Board of Governors of the Republican National Lawyers Association, where she is a former president.[2][3][4]
Bibliography[edit]
Press articles[edit]
Setting the record straight on voter ID laws, The Daily Caller, July 6, 2011.
Campaign-Finance Reform and Its Casualties, The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2012.
Give Partisanship a Rest and Address Real Issues, The New York Times, November 9, 2012.
Scholarly articles[edit]
'The Rise of America’s Two National Pastimes: Baseball and the Law' (1999, Michigan Law Review)[2][3]
'Donor Disclosure: Undermining The First Amendment' (Minnesota Law Review, 2012)[2][3]
Books[edit]
The Lobbying Compliance Handbook (2008, Columbia Books)[2][3]
References[edit]
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Pappas, Christine. MITCHELL, CLETA DEATHERAGE (1950- ), Oklahoma Historical Society
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m Foley & Lardner biography
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m American Conservative Union Foundation biography
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i Republican National Lawyers Association biography
^ Jump up to:a b c d e Leadership Institute Speaker Bio
^ Jump up to:a b c d Elizabeth Williamson, Riding Shotgun on Campaign Trail, The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2010
Jump up^ Cleta Mitchell
Jump up^ Meet Cleta Mitchell, the Conservative Movement's Anti-Gay Eminence Grise - Jonathan Krohn - The Atlantic
Jump up^ The Bradley Foundation Board of Directors
Jump up^ National Rifle Association Board of Directors
Categories: 1950 births People from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma University of Oklahoma alumni American lawyers Members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives National Rifle Association Living people Oklahoma Republicans Women state legislators in Oklahoma
fedsoc bs
Cleta Mitchell is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Foley & Lardner LLP and a member of the firm’s Political Law Practice. With more than 40 years of experience in law, politics and public policy, Ms. Mitchell advises nonprofit and issue organizations, corporations, candidates, campaigns, and individuals on state and federal campaign finance law, election law, and compliance issues related to lobbying, ethics and financial disclosure. Ms. Mitchell practices before the Federal Election Commission, the ethics committees of the US House and Senate and similar state and local enforcement bodies and agencies.
Ms. Mitchell has extensive experience on the federal lobbying and ethics law enacted by Congress in 2007, having taught dozens of seminars on the subject since its passage. In 2008, Ms. Mitchell authored The Lobbying Compliance Handbook, published by Columbia Books, Inc.
Ms. Mitchell represents numerous candidates, campaigns and members of Congress, as well as state and national political party committees. She has served as legal counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Ms. Mitchell served as co-counsel for the National Rifle Association in the Supreme Court case involving the 2002 federal campaign finance law.
Ms. Mitchell has testified before Congress on numerous occasions related to election law, campaign finance and lobbying and ethics laws, and is a frequent speaker and guest commentator on political law. In 1999, she authored "The Rise of America’s Two National Pastimes: Baseball and the Law," published by the University of Michigan Law Review, and in 2012, Ms. Mitchell authored “Donor Disclosure: Undermining The First Amendment,” published by theMinnesota Law Review. In 2013, she was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, “How to Investigate the IRS.”
Ms. Mitchell served on the advisory council to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law and as an advisor on the American Law Institute's Election Law Project entitled, “Principles of Election Law: Dispute Resolution.” She serves on the board of directors of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, is chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation, and has served as the president of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Ms. Mitchell has been Peer Review Rated as AV® Preeminent™, the highest performance rating in Martindale-Hubbell's peer review rating system and has been selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® for five consecutive years since 2010 for her work in administrative/regulatory law. She was also named a "Top Lawyer" in Washington D.C. by the Washingtonian for her work in political and campaign law. For her work in government and political law, she is listed in Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers (2010 - 2013). In 2012, National Journal named her one of Washington’s 25 Most Influential Women. Ms. Mitchell was a teaching fellow at the Institute of Politics, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1981 and was the Shapiro Fellow at the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University in 2001.
Ms. Mitchell was a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976-1984 where she chaired the House Appropriations and Budget Committee. She served on the executive committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Ms. Mitchell was in private law practice in Oklahoma City in litigation and administrative law until 1991 when she became director and general counsel of the Term Limits Legal Institute in Washington, D.C. She litigated cases in state and federal courts nationwide on congressional term limits and served as co-counsel with former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell in the U.S. Supreme Court case on term limits for members of Congress.
Ms. Mitchell received her B.A. (high honors, 1973) and J.D. (1975) from the University of Oklahoma. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, the State of Oklahoma, the Supreme Court of the United States and federal district and appellate courts
Publications
Supreme Court October Term 2009: What Is In Store? - Event Audio/Video
October 1, 2009