voter fraud 2 ballot harvest

reboot of old category for d'souza BS

but not limited to harvest

includes ID bs

see voter suppress

SEE WH INFLUENCER VIDEO // JOK

see felony disenfranchisement

SEE GOP VOTER FRAUD

see big lie ...5

islam veritas BS

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lots of paper ballot BS lately 1123 eg argentina

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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

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MMA

Nick Shirley rebooted James O’Keefe’s debunked voter fraud myths for a new audience

Shirley’s new California video is little more than a rehashing of O’Keefe’s bogus claims from over a decade ago

Written by John Knefel & Sophie Lawton

Published 02/18/26

Citation

Andrea Austria / Media Matters

A new video by MAGA provocateur Nick Shirley purports to expose voter fraud in California, but in fact it’s little more than a repackaging of false narratives spread over a decade ago by right-wing operative James O'Keefe. In both cases, the right-wing influencers suggest that fraud could exist without actually exposing any, relying on innuendo and hypotheticals rather than evidence.

O’Keefe created the template for undercover videos meant to expose and embarrass liberal organizations and causes. His old videos, like Shirley’s new ones, were frequently debunked in real time, but they nevertheless served a role in providing fuel to conservative content creators hungry to stoke outrage about perceived liberal excesses. Shirley’s repackaging shouldn’t be surprising given the incentives for young, MAGA-aligned influencers to make a name for themselves in a crowded field. But the original claims didn't provoke any policy changes — reasonably so, given that they were bogus — so Shirley's repackaging has little to offer beyond a hope that new consumers take the bait.

Shirley gained prominence in recent months following a so-called investigation into fraud in Minneapolis day care centers. Although there were some real instances of fraud within the city’s social services, local news and prosecutors had already exposed and investigated many instances of wrong-doing. Still, The New York Times referred to Shirley as having “spurred the federal crackdown on Minneapolis.”

Once the right-wing’s most identifiable creator of sting-style — often deliberately misleading — exposés, O’Keefe’s star has since somewhat fallen. In 2010, O’Keefe founded Project Veritas, and over more than a decade the organization produced videos meant to discredit perceived liberal organizations, often through tactics such as manipulation and deceptive editing. According to Rolling Stone, in 2023 O’Keefe “either left or was pushed out of his own company … depending on whom you ask.” He has since tried to reestablish himself in the right-wing media ecosystem, including by creating an award in 2025 for the so-called citizen journalists who have followed in his footsteps. The first recipient was Nick Shirley.

Shirley, like O’Keefe, is promoting the possibility of fraud that he hasn't actually found

Shirley’s is one of many from right-wing influencers, such as Benny Johnson, decrying supposedly rampant voter fraud in California, and it includes many examples and myths that have already been debunked. One of the most prominent narratives in Shirley’s video, which was already debunked when Johnson spread it, is that voters whose registrations list central locations, like an abandoned building, as an address are a clear sign of fraud. However, as Democracy Docket notes, California law “gives people experiencing homelessness the flexibility to use any location to register to vote. As long as unhoused residents can describe the place where they spend most of their time — whether it’s an address, a cross street or a vacant lot — they can legally list it as their address on their voter registration form.”

Another one of Shirley's key examples of “fraud” in the video is a previously reported story about a woman who registered her dog to vote and cast two ballots for him in 2021 and 2022, only one of which was counted. The woman, a registered Republican, self-reported her crimes and is facing six years in prison.

The premise of Shirley’s 20-minute video is that there could be fraud in California without stricter voter ID laws and “with the state receiving millions of illegal migrants, the opportunities for fraud now are even higher.” California does require a valid ID or Social Security number when registering to vote or when voting for the first time after registering by mail, and extensive research has shown that noncitizen voting in U.S. elections is exceedingly rare and extremely unlikely to impact elections. Yet Shirley’s video has been picked up by others in right-wing media, including livestreamer, former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and conspiracy theory website The Gateway Pundit.

Had someone just awoken from a decadelong coma, they might find these types of claims quite familiar. In 2012, O’Keefe attempted to show how easy it was to commit voter fraud in a state without strict voter ID laws via a video titled “Dead people receive ballots in NH primary,” which claims that conspirators could use the names of the deceased to cast fraudulent ballots to steal an election. But, as Media Matters noted at the time, the video “actually demonstrates just how difficult it would be to pull off such a plot.”

Although it’s true that making sure ballot rolls are accurate is important, O’Keefe’s stunt only showed that without knowing how many votes were needed, the conspirators would need to engage in a massive plot and subsequent cover-up to make sure they had covered the spread. It would be an enormous undertaking. O’Keefe provided no evidence that such a scheme existed for the simple reason that there was no such plot.

In another one of O’Keefe’s “gotcha” videos on voter fraud, a Project Veritas employee almost obtains a ballot meant for registered voter Eric Holder, then the U.S. attorney general. Project Veritas marketed the video as a slam dunk, claiming it had “proven” fraud occurred while in reality no vote was cast and no fraud occurred. The manufactured stunt, like Shirley’s escapades in California, was another senseless attempt to rally people behind more restrictive voter ID laws.

Though Shirley’s claims about California include some different details from O’Keefe and Project Veritas’ claims, the gist is the same: Both attempt to prove “voter fraud” and fail to show any actual fraud being committed. Such right-wing misinformation has been debunked for years while the truth is still that fraud is just not happening at the scale they claim.

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AN 2 26

When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spoke at a press conference in Scottsdale, Arizona on February 13, she echoed President Donald Trump's claim that the Grand Canyon State is a hotbed of voter fraud. But when a reporter asked her for specific examples, Noem couldn't provide any and remarked, "Oh, I'm sure there's many of them."

In an opinion column published on February 17, MS NOW's Steve Benen emphasizes that MAGA Republicans have a pattern of making voter fraud claims but never offer concrete proof to back them up.

"The point of her trip to Arizona was to advance Republican conspiracy theories related to voting and election administration," Benen explains. "In fact, the South Dakotan insisted, during her trip, that Arizona is 'an absolute disaster' when it comes to elections…. When a reporter asked whether she was aware of any examples of voter fraud actually happening in the state, the secretary pointed to nothing."

Benen continues, "This led to ample pushback from state officials, who explained in detail that the state's system of elections is already secure and that they're already doing what Noem says needs to be done…. When a powerful federal official travels across the country to accuse a state of having a system of elections that's become 'an absolute disaster,' she really only has one job: Prove it. The very least Noem could have done is to offer one example of fraud."

The MS NOW columnist and "Rachel Maddow Show" producer notes that similarly, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) claims that undocumented immigrants are voting in U.S. elections in big numbers but never offers substantial proof to support his claims.

"It's worth emphasizing that after the 2020 election," Benen recalls, "Republicans thought they'd finally come up with a real example of voter fraud: A Nevada man named Donald Kirk Hartle claimed that someone had cast a ballot in the 2020 election on behalf of his late wife, who'd died three years earlier…. Except they were wrong."

Benen adds, "Hartle had lied and ultimately pleaded guilty to having cast the ballot himself. The single best example Republicans could come up with wasn't real. Six years later, Noem is 'sure' there are 'many'” such examples — but she just can't tell you about a single one."

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AN 2 26 VID

President Donald Trump has called on the federal government to "nationalize the voting" across the United States, baselessly claiming that major cities in swing states are conducting fraudulent elections. But one expert who Trump once hired to find proof of voter fraud says it's almost nonexistent.

, data specialist Ken Block said Trump's rationale to have the federal government assume control of elections didn't hold water. He also said the Trump administration's recent raid of an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia harkened back to his prior work with the Trump 2020 campaign.

"The Trump campaign in 2020 hired me to look for evidence of voter fraud. And they asked me to review about 20 different claims of voter fraud that came into the campaign from everywhere around the world," Block said. "Apparently, every one of the 20 claims they asked me to evaluate, I was able to show that they were false. And we did find small amounts of voter fraud, but never did we find enough voter fraud to have been able to change the outcome of any of the swing state elections in 2020."

Block went on to say that despite Trump's insistence that there was election fraud in Georgia in 2020, no evidence has ever surfaced proving him correct. He reminded viewers that some Trump associates – like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — were never able to substantiate any of their claims in court when asked to prove supposed fraud in the Peach State.

"We've had individuals do data analytics claiming to have found fraud. And in legislative hearings, they were humiliated when legislators asked questions and were able to show that the analyses were false," he said. "There's been nothing but allegations that I've been able to see so far, and nothing that's borne any fruit. I wonder when we're going to move on from this."

CNN host Boris Sanchez noted that in Block's new book, "Disproven," he recounted that he reported his findings debunking Trump's election fraud claims to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Block said he was never able to confirm if Meadows actually told Trump that his claims were proven wrong by his own hired expert.

"I don't know if Meadows communicated my findings into the Oval Office. A second company was also hired at the same time. Mine was to look for evidence of voter fraud. They had the misfortune of going into the oval office to communicate their findings directly," he said. "And those findings were that they could not find any evidence of voter fraud."

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an 8 24

April 12, 2024

On Friday, former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) gave a joint press conference at Mar-a-Lago to introduce an initiative aimed at preventing non-citizens from voting. But one Fox News host slammed that policy proposal as a red herring.

Johnson joined Trump for the press conference in the wake of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) threatening to bring a motion to vacate to the floor of the House of Representatives in protest of Johnson's bipartisan efforts to keep the federal government open. Trump made it clear that Johnson had his support, despite Greene saying on Friday that the speaker was "full of sh--" during an interview with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

During the press conference, with Trump scowling behind him, Johnson promised to introduce legislation "to require that every single person who registers to vote in a federal election must prove that they're an American citizen first."

READ MORE:['Chaos': MTG moves to oust Johnson as Gaetz says Democrat Jeffries could be speaker

Of course, as Punchbowl News' John Bresnahan tweeted, US residents who lack citizenship "can’t vote in federal elections [and] haven’t been able to do so for decades." During a Friday segment on Fox News' The Five, panelist Richard Fowler echoed that sentiment, casting doubt on the need for a new law on the books to ban non-citizens from voting.

"This press conference was billed as an 'election integrity' press conference," Fowler said. "In 1996 congress passed the illegal immigration reform and immigration responsibility act. That act makes it explicitly illegal for noncitizens to vote."

"According to The Heritage Foundation's database on voter fraud, there’s been fewer than 50 cases of noncitizens voting in elections since 2002," he continued. "Not only has the Heritage Foundation said this, the Bipartisan Policy Center has said this, the Brennan Center for Justice has said this, the FBI has said this."

"Over and over and over again, people keep saying there's 'voter fraud,' and there's no evidence of voter fraud. There's no evidence of non-citizens voting in federal elections. " Fowler added. "And until they prove that, this press conference to me was null and void."

READ MORE:[(Opinion) 'By design': Johnson falsely claims Democrats are trying to turn 'illegals' into voters

Under current law, any non-citizen that tries to vote in a federal election can be charged with a felony, fined heavily and potentially deported. And as Fowler explained, the Brennan Center for Justice debunked the phantom issue of non-citizen voting, breaking down what it would entail in a recent post to its website.

"Imagine you’re an undocumented person living in the United States," wrote the Brennan Center's Sean Morales-Doyle. "Would you risk everything — your freedom, your life in the United States, your ability to be near your family — just to cast a single ballot?"

"It’s a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. It’s also a crime under every state’s laws," he added. "In fact, under federal law, you could face up to five years in prison simply for registering to vote."

Watch the video of Fowler's remarks below, or by[clicking this link.

READ MORE:[Wife of Iowa Republican primary candidate convicted on 52 counts of voter fraud from 2020 election

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pt man on voter suppression 2024?

an 3 24

Trump campaign says it plans to change tactics from 2020 when Joe Biden beat the then-incumbent president by more than 7 million votes, and this time go on “offense” by having “soldiers” and “poll watchers” at polling places.

Despite the Trump campaign’s relentless claims of voter fraud, more than 60 court rulings found those claims to be unsupported by facts: there was no significant voter fraud. Last year The Brookings Institution cited an extensive report from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which found, for example, voter “fraud in Texas amounted to 0.000096% of all ballots cast.”

Vowing to “to play offense this time around,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday, appearing on “The Kimberly Guilfoyle Show,” said they are “investing a lot of money into voter integrity efforts to ensure that every American knows their ballot will be cast and counted and matter.”

“We’re not going to play defense, like we unfortunately did in 2020. We’re going to have soldiers, poll watchers on the ground who are making sure that there are no irregularities and fraud like we saw in the last election.”

Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Donald Trump Jr., was at the January 6, 2021 rally at the Ellipse, and helped organize and fundraise for the event. Propublica that year reported she had “boasted to a GOP operative that she had raised $3 million for the rally that helped fuel the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.”

“Guilfoyle’s texts, reviewed by ProPublica, represent the strongest indication yet that members of the Trump family circle were directly involved in the financing and organization of the rally. The attack on the Capitol that followed it left five dead and scores injured.”

“I love it,” Guilfoyle told Leavitt. “I cannot wait.”

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an 12 23

President Joe Biden's reelection campaign has joined a lawsuit seeking to halt a law in a battleground state that could disqualify thousands of ballots in 2024.

Politico reported Friday that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is challenging a law New Hampshire's Republican-controlled legislature passed last year that requires voters who registered to vote on Election Day (which requires the signing of an affidavit attesting that they are a resident of New Hampshire) to produce a photo ID within seven days of registration, or else their votes would be tossed out. Senate Bill 418 stipulates that in addition to rejecting ballots, those voters' names would be referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General's office for investigation.

"President Biden and Vice President Harris believe that we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible American voter to participate in our democracy. New Hampshire’s law flies in the face of that belief, and is a chilling and unacceptable embrace of the election fraud hysteria championed by Donald Trump," Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez told Politico. "In an election that could very well determine the fate of our democracy, it is our imperative to fight for the right to vote. This is just the beginning."

According to Politico, there were approximately 75,000 new voters who registered on Election Day 2020, though data on how many of those new voters had photo ID is unavailable. However, Biden won the Granite State by less than 70,000 votes in 2020, meaning the law has the potential to swing election results.

Even though New Hampshire has a Republican trifecta government (with the GOP in control of both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor's mansion) its representatives in the House of Representatives and US Senate are all Democrats, meaning the Granite State's four Electoral college votes are not guaranteed to either party. Having the challenge answered by the February 2024 primary is unlikely, but the Biden campaign aims to have the issue litigated in advance of the 2024 general election in November.

This marks the second such DNC lawsuit challenging a state's election laws, following an October challenge to North Carolina's Senate bill 747, which has similar provisions governing same-day voter registration and photo ID requirements. Democratic governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill, but the GOP-dominated legislature overrode Cooper's veto. The DNC filed the lawsuit shortly after the law took effect.

SB 418 has been previously challenged by the New Hampshire American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which called the law "unconstitutional," saying it would "diminish the secrecy of ballots and tie voter’s names to the candidates and issues for which they voted on their ballot." The suit was ultimately dismissed for a lack of standing.

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a new analysis of Republican-led "election integrity" prosecutions of alleged voter fraud found not only an extremely low success rate, but a common theme of prosecutions disproportionately targeting Democrats and minority voters.

This week the Washington Post published a report analyzing voter fraud prosecutions in six different Republican-led states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Virginia — dating back to the 2020 presidential election. The Post found that out of tens of millions of ballots cast in those states since then, there were only 47 confirmed convictions out of 136 total prosecutions. Additionally, 76% of defendants in those cases were either Black or Hispanic, compared to just 24% of defendants who are white.

"At best, these 'election integrity' units are for show, designed to placate far-right election denialists in the conservative base," Heather Sawyer, executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight, told the Post. "At worst, they are used to justify new voting restrictions and to intimidate people — especially racial minorities — from exercising their right to vote."

The Post's report additionally found that all of the 47 voter fraud-related convictions occurred in Florida, Ohio and Texas with Arkansas, Georgia and Virginia's prosecutions not yielding a single guilty verdict despite spending millions of tax dollars. And out of the 115 cases resolved as of December, the Post found that 42 of those prosecutions ended in dismissal, acquittal or dropped charges.

In addition to the investigations overwhelmingly targeting racial minorities, the publication found that 58% of defendants were registered Democrats while only 23% were registered Republicans. The remaining defendants weren't registered with any political party. And contrary to former President Trump's claims that he was unfairly disadvantaged by widespread cheating, the bulk of prosecutions were over minor mistakes, like falsifying a registration form or voting despite being barred from doing so due to a felony conviction.

"They did not have a record of fraud that they needed to go and create these investigative units," Rutgers University professor Lorraine Minnite said. "The fact that they have not produced evidence of fraud is support for their lack of necessity."

The Post's findings in its most recent report are similar to another deep dive into alleged voter fraud by Loyola University-Los Angeles law professor Justin Levitt. In a 2014 analysis for the Post, Levitt found just 31 credible instances of voter fraud out of more than one billion ballots cast since 2000.

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mma 113 projection

lAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): All of these characters sound like people who are prepared to cheat, or at least justify cheating next year. After all, if Trump really is what they say he is -- the man who will end democracy, a Hitlerian figure -- then how could he possibly be allowed to be able to run for office, be approaching the White House? If they really believe what they're saying, shouldn't we expect that they'll try to defeat him or knock him off by any means necessary?

...

And because the voters are turning to Trump, all they can do is write insipid articles alleging the same old, same old. They're so angry that they're prepared to break the whole system, perhaps even laying the groundwork for election interference next November, because they just don't care. It's about winning. That's all that matters.

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11 23 rww

pillow salesman turned Trump-supporting election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell is now making baseless insinuations that the recent reelection victory of popular Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was somehow rigged. In an email sent Tuesday to supporters of his “Lindell Offense Fund,” Lindell wrongly claimed that “it makes no sense” that Beshear defeated the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron. In another email sent Wednesday, Lindell falsely claimed, “Kentucky Governor election has an unbelievable outcome. So much so that all hands are on deck to fight the suspicious outcome.”

The truth is that Beshear led in pre-election polls, even though the race tightened at the end. His victory made plenty of sense to anyone paying attention to state politics. As documented by many journalists who wrote about the election, Beshear benefited from his family’s long presence in state politics, competent stewardship of economic development, and effective responses to natural disasters.

And, while the religious-right-aligned Lindell would not be likely to admit that Cameron’s anti-abortion extremism hurt him, Beshear took it on directly. While Cameron supported the no-exceptions-for-rape-or-incest abortion ban passed in 2022 by the state’s Republican-supermajority legislature over Beshear’s veto, Beshear’s campaign ran a devastating ad featuring a young woman who had been raped at age 12 by her stepfather. “This is to you, Daniel Cameron,” the woman says in the ad. “To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable.”

Lindell has been raising money and promoting bogus election conspiracies for the past three years. He has made and refused to deliver on promises that he had acquired evidence to prove that the Chinese government hijacked the election by hacking voting machines. He promoted the widely debunked claims made by Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” movie and book. Religious-right figure Lance Wallnau has promoted Lindell’s latest scheme—which Lindell says was given to him by God—to use drones that would supposedly expose fraud by detecting WiFi signals. Earlier this month, Lindell declared that giving him money to supposedly secure the 2024 election would be “the best bang for your buck to save your country of any time in history since 1776.”

Lindell’s recent conspiracy-mongering email about the Kentucky focused on numbers, implying that the only explanation for Cameron receiving fewer votes than he did in his election as attorney general, and for Cameron getting 150,000 fewer votes than the Republican secretary of state did in this election, was some kind of systemic fraud:

What gives? And why is the MSM ignoring this massive discrepancy?

This is one of the reasons why LOF is here – and why I continue to call out the LIES OF THE LEFT – the Rigged Machines, the Manipulation of Data, and the Early Voting and Absentee Voting – both easily rigged!

The email’s ridiculous claims are, of course, a prelude to Lindell asking for money to continue his efforts to “SAVE THIS GREAT COUNTRY” by doing away with voting machines, early voting, and mail-in ballots.

Trump’s lies about election fraud fueled the rage of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The kind of lies Trump and Lindell have relentlessly promoted since then have stoked anger and harassment against election officials, many of whom have left their jobs. As the Brennan Center’s Larry Norden told ABC News this month, Lindell’s relentless promotion of false claims about election fraud are dangerous: “Mike Lindell has gotten away with lying a lot about elections, but it’s not without consequences and not without harms to individuals who work in elections — and more broadly to the functioning of our democratic system.”

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an 6 23

'Please, Jesus, not Georgia': Jasmine Crockett fact-checks GOP colleagues over voter fraud claims

Maya BoddieJune 07, 2023

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), during a congressional hearing Wednesday, called out her Republican colleagues over their continued allegations of voter fraud.

Led by Committee on House Administration and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, the joint hearing called "American Confidence in Elections: The Path to Election Integrity in the District of Columbia," was held overlawmakers' claim that "election laws in DC lead to fraud."

During her speech, Crockett said, "Every time we seemingly have a hearing on voting rights, we talking about the fact that people are cheating. So let's talk about who's cheating. I got a few articles."

[READ MORE: Fox News’ 'vitriolic lies' are a threat to US democracy: ex-DHS official

She asked the witnesses, "Uh, are you familiar with the fact that there was recently a settlement with this little news company called Fox News?"

Vice President of Democracy at The Brennan Center, Wendy Weiser, answered, "Yes."

Crockett replied, "Ok, there we go. I'm running out of time so I'ma keep going. There also was this article — because I don't want us to base anything on Georgia at all — please, Jesus, not Georgia — because Georgia purged 87,000 votes."

Greene interrupted the Democratic congresswoman saying, "Will the gentlewoman yield? I think Georgia matters."

READ MORE: Here’s how Trump accidentally helped Pennsylvania’s attorney general destroy his election fraud lies

Crockett emphasized, "I will not yield, I'm reclaiming my time," adding, "There were 87,000 people that were purged that were legitimate voters, so no we don't wanna copy off of Georgia."

She then noted, "Also, another GOP voter admits he committed fraud. Another one in Pennsylvania, man who admits he voted for Trump with his dead mom's name because he listened to too much propaganda."

According to The New York Times, last month, Fox News was yet again hit with a defamation lawsuit from Nina Jankowicz, former director of the "short-lived Department of Homeland Security division assigned with coordinating efforts to monitor and address disinformation threats to national security."

Jankowicz claims the right-wing network "promoted lies about her that generated serious threats to her safety and harmed her career prospects."

Furthermore, former President Donald Trump could be prosecuted by Georgia's Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in the coming months over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Fani Willis’ latest moves strongly indicate a Trump indictment in Georgia is coming this summer

The New York Times' full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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10 22 48 43% --> runoff threat coup if lose

https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/alex-jones-claims-**massive-election-fraud-brazilian**-presidential-election

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https://www.fox9.com/news/project-veritas-alleges-election-fraud-evidence-scant

kmsp minneapolis? local fox

Project Veritas alleges election fraud, evidence scant

By Tom Lyden Published September 28, 2020 Updated September 29, 2020PoliticsFOX 9

(FOX 9) - “This is the scene of the crime, in downtown Minneapolis,” said the guy in the leather jacket against a backdrop of the city’s skyline.

James O’Keefe, of the conservative propaganda operation Project Veritas, was back in the public spotlight and once again making an incendiary allegation: There was major election fraud in Minneapolis.

[pix?]

Project Veritas alleges election fraud, evidence scant

A Project Veritas video alleges election fraud involving Rep. Ilhan Omar, yet the evidence is scant.

One problem: The hard evidence of cash in exchange for votes was lacking, and some of the other conduct of collecting ballots might be perfectly legal.

The meat of the Project Veritas report, posted on YouTube Sunday night, was a Snapchat video from the brother of newly elected City Councilman Jamal Hassan. In the video, Liban Mohamed, is seen driving his car and bragging about money in politics with what appears to be dozens of mailed in ballots.

“Money is everything. Money is the king of this world. If you don’t have money you should not be here. Period,” said Liban Mohamed in the video. Attempts to reach Liban Mohamed through his social media accounts were not successful.

For O’Keefe the implication was clear: Money was being exchanged for votes, and those ballots were being "harvested."

But the full context of the video is unclear. Were the ballots sealed? Had they already been filled out? Where did the ballots come from?

And the timing of that video may be critical. The practice of turning in ballots that are not your own – or, "harvesting" – was in flux this summer with three separate court decisions.

Historically in Minnesota, there has been a three-person limit for bringing in other people’s ballots. But in July a district court ruling invalidated that limitation. The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed the ruling in September, but that was after the primary on August 11.

The court rulings created a window where the three-person limit was not enforced from July 28 through August 11. Project Veritas claims Liban Mohamed’s Snapchat video was posted outside that window on July 2.

The video was buttressed by an interview with a controversial community activist, Omar Jamal. Jamal speculated, without evidence, that the campaign of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was behind the ballot harvesting.

In surreptitiously recorded video, other anonymous figures echo those sentiments in the story.

On Monday, Jamal had set-up a fundraising page as the “Project Veritas Insider,” raising $14,000.

President Donald Trump, who has been suggesting that voter fraud is rampant, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, tweeted about the Project Veritas story: “This is totally illegal. Hope that the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota has this, and other of her (Ilhan Omar) misdeeds, under serious review???”

GOP leaders in Minnesota called for the Minnesota Secretary of State to investigate the allegations.

A spokesperson for Secretary of State Steve Simon, who was recognizing Yom Kippur, said, “Our office does not make determinations of legality, nor do we have investigative authority.”

The spokesperson suggested anyone with evidence of election fraud go to the appropriate county attorney.

But the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said it “… has received no information of cases involving so-called ballot harvesting in any elections.” The office suggested those who do have information go to Minneapolis Police.

A Minneapolis Police spokesperson said, “We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements,” in the Project Veritas report.

Congresswoman Omar, who won her primary in a landslide by 35,000 votes, said in a statement, “the amount of truth to this story is equal to the amount Donald Trump paid in taxes in 10 out of the last 15 years: zero.”

The timing of the report is certainly curious. The Project Veritas story was posted Sunday night, around the same time the New York Times rolled with its story about Trump’s history of avoiding federal income tax.

O’Keefe has a long resume of disinformation, entrapment, and working in concert with Republican operatives. In fact, O’Keefe recently met with the Chairman of Trump’s Minnesota campaign.

On Monday night Project Veritas released a second part of their investigation that purports to show a ‘ballot harvester’ allegedly connected to Congresswoman Omar giving an unidentified man $200 in exchange for a vote. But the exact circumstances and nature of the light-hearted, joking exchange is unclear.

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big booster

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/oans-summer-election-conspiracy-theories

The 2020 presidential election was 693 days ago, and One America News Network is still a major hub for both denying the reality of 2020 and projecting conspiracy theories onto future elections.

Since June, OAN’s election fraud coverage has continued to hinge on hosts’ and guests’ repeated denials of the fairness of the 2020 election. It has included everything from claims that the ballot counts were tampered with to continued promotion of Dinesh D'Souza's ridiculous 2000 Mules documentary. And despite an ongoing $1.6 billion defamation suit, OAN has even proclaimed that “we were right” about Dominion Voting Systems.

With the stolen election as bedrock, OAN is looking grimly toward the future, with paranoid warnings that the Democrats will now use TikTok, postal unions, and their October surprise — “the next COVID election variant” — to cheat in the midterms and beyond. All this as the supposedly “Stalinesque” FBI runs interference for President Joe Biden’s political goals with actions like seizing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s cell phone.

OAN’s stolen election cinematic universe remains as rich with misinformation as ever, and they're hoping their viewers get involved. As Steve Bannon put it during an appearance on the network, “It’s all about … whether this audience, whether this audience turns out and brings people with it, and becomes poll workers, election judges, election officials, and also force multipliers to get everybody to the polls...

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an 8 22

For more than a year, a coordinated group of Texas activists have mounted a statewide effort to further former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election: They’ve sent voters hundreds of postcards requesting personal information, questioned residents at addresses pulled from voter rolls, and examined thousands of ballots for unspecified irregularities.

So far, despite the work of what they say are dozens of steadfast volunteers across the state, they’ve offered no compelling evidence of mass fraud.

That isn’t slowing them down.

“We are a grass-roots organization in Ft. Worth/Tarrant County that has been praying and seeking God’s guidance regarding suspicious election statistics following the Nov 2020 elections,” members of the Tarrant County-based group wrote to the secretary of state in an email late last year. He met with them a month later, but said nothing came of it.

Similar efforts by affiliated groups are taking place in Harris, Hays, Travis, Williamson, Bexar, Bell, Collin, and Dallas counties. But the work appears to be rooted in Tarrant County, home of Fort Worth — Texas’s reddest major city whose future as such remains unclear.

This work echoes efforts nationwide by allies of former President Trump who have been sowing doubts about the integrity of the vote, advocating for the creation of groups such as this one to investigate and monitor the administration of elections at a local level.

Interviews with more than half a dozen local and state officials, as well as emails obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight and shared with Votebeat, paint a vivid picture of a coordinated network of activists eager to find an audience for its claims. Officials say the group has offered no valid evidence of fraud despite a relentless and wandering investigation.

“Texas voting processes are not okay,” the network’s leaders wrote on aninformational flier earlier this year. The conspiracy-laced screed featured a QR code linked to a 13-minute video by embattled Colorado clerk Tina Peters, who by that point had been charged with a list of federal and state crimes for tampering with election equipment and was running for the Republican nomination for Colorado Secretary of State. She would later lose handily, blaming fraud.

In early 2021, the network of activist groups began filing public records requests seeking voter rolls and the ability to inspect physical ballots in counties across the state. Once they got access to the voter roll — a public document — their on-the-ground activity began in earnest. In June of last year theysent canvassing postcards to Fort Worth voters asking them to enter their personal information into a website, to ensure “no irregular votes were added and that people’s votes counted” in the 2020 election. Voters, alarmed, contacted state and local elections officials to ask if the inquiries had come from them. They had not, and voters were told to give the group no information.

By July 2021, volunteers were knocking on doors in Tarrant County attempting to verify voters’ addresses and ask whether they had voted. Since then, affiliated groups have done the same in Collin, Hays, Harris, Travis, and Williamson Counties.They claim they’ve knocked on more than 10,000 doors.

The emails provided by American Oversight show the level of coordination between the Tarrant County group, called Tarrant County Citizens for Election Integrity, and like-minded organizations across the state. Most notably with Alan Vera, the chair of the Harris County Republican Party’s ballot security committee, who has been baselessly sounding the alarm on voter fraud in Texas for the better part oftwo decades. The Harris County Attorney’s Office announced in July it wasinvestigating allegations of Vera’s group — the Texas Election Network — knocking on doors, verifying voters’ addresses and asking them to sign affidavits.

Vera did not respond to a request for comment, and no one could tell Votebeat what, if anything, had been learned from knocking on so many doors. Dan Bates, a Fort Worth attorney who is the Tarrant County group’s head counsel, presented no evidence that could be successfully used to prove fraudulent activity.

His group also came bearing little in the way of proof in December 2021, when he and eight others successfully invitednewly appointed Secretary of State John Scott for breakfast at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth — a swanky, members-only golf club with a reported $80,000 initiation fee.

Scott, who briefly represented the Trump campaign in a challenge to election results in Pennsylvania before backing out due to an absence of evidence, began receiving emails from the group shortly after Gov. Greg Abbott tapped him for the position less than two months before.

Buff Kizer, a Fort Worth resident and self-identified part-time chaplain, wrote to Scott in November 2021 offering to show Scott “findings of voter rolls and voting issues” in Fort Worth and Tarrant County, including vacant lots, fictitious addresses, and “excessive number of votes from a single address.”

“They did provide a packet of information, I flipped through it,” Scott told Votebeat. Although he turned the packet over to his office’s audit division, nothing came of the complaints. Scott wouldn’t say whether he shared the group’s concerns of voter fraud, only that he acknowledged they have a right to raise them and show their evidence.

“We want the information. And to the extent the information turns out to be relevant, great. To the extent it proves to be irrelevant, then we’ll make sure they understand and we can document why we believe it is irrelevant,” Scott said.

There are legitimate reasons why a voter might list a vacant lot or a P.O. Box on their voter registration forms, Sam Taylor, assistant secretary of state for communications said. Laws protecting the personal information of domestic violence victims, peace officers, and certain public officials allow them to keep their address of residence withheld from public release or anonymized, and voters without a permanent or stable address can register using alternative addresses.

“For example, if a homeless person wants to register to vote, they can say, ‘My residence is at the corner of I-35 and Cesar Chavez.’ And they can put a PO Box as their mailing address,” Taylor said.

Additionally, multiple voters registered at one address could mean that a family of four adults at one location are all registered to vote.

Bates said he and the group are unsatisfied with Scott’s lack of action, and the lack of action of the Tarrant County Commissioners Court.

“If our elected officials are not going to make an inspection [of the machines] we will do it and we will pay for it,” he said, expressing frustration that their requests to do such inspections have been rebuffed.

Scott said his office is already doing its due diligence. The secretary of state’s office is finalizing its own audit of the 2020 election on Tarrant, Collin, Dallas, and Harris Counties — the two largest Republican and two largest Democratic counties in the state, respectively. The first phase was released in December, shortly after Scott met with the group, andrevealed no major issues. The full audit should be completed by September.

Scott was far from the only person the Tarrant County group attempted to convince to spare some time. Emails to Scott from the group state that in Collin County they have “cooperative officials at all levels.” Collin County election administration officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Emails show Citizens for Election Integrity also contacted Tarrant County Sheriff Bill E. Waybourn. A sheriff’s office spokesperson would not say whether Waybourn met or communicated with people involved with the group, noting only that “election discussions between the Sheriff and citizens have not revealed evidence of a criminal nature to date.”

Kizer told Scott by email the group also briefed Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican representing part of Montgomery County just north of Houston. Toth, Kizer wrote, “shares our concerns” and was copied on the email.

Toth’s legislative background suggests his sympathies: In 2021, Toth sponsored a bill that would have required a forensic audit of the 2020 results in counties with populations over 415,000 (there currently a dozen such counties). The bill failed.

More alarming has been the spotlight the group has cast on local election administrators. In Tarrant County, an outsized share of Citizens for Election Integrity’s ire has been directed at Heider Garcia, the election administrator.

In the fall of 2020, a ham-fisted and sloppily produced video called “Who is Heider Garcia?” began making the rounds on rightwing social media. Toth, the sympathetic state representative, shared the video on his own Facebook page. “Heider Garcia of SmartMatic is grilled in the Philippines over voter fraud. He now runs election (sic) in Tarrant County, Texas. What could possibly go wrong?” he wrote in late November 2020. “Democrats play to win while Republicans play for a participation trophy.”

The video made its way onto sites like 4Chan and 8Chan, known for hate-filled content posted by conspiracy theorists, resulting in near constant harassment for Garcia. Tarrant County Citizens for Election Integrity shared the video repeatedly on its own channels.

It alleges Garcia — who worked for election technology company Smartmatic before taking jobs in election administration in California and then Texas — was involved in voter fraud in the Philippines. Garcia can be seen in the video being grilled by a Filipino lawmaker, a remnant of his work implementing Smartmatic voting machines in the country more than a decade ago.

Bates told Votebeat he is familiar with the video but does not know who created it or why, and defended it as “informational.”

Garcia said the allegations in the video are false. Notably, the Philippines never rejected voting systems by Smartmatic and continues to use them.

But Garcia worries about the safety of his family given how personal the attacks have become, he said.

“They will say these things, but then they’ll come in and they’ll be very polite and respectful. You know, like, ‘Oh, no, we know you’re a really good guy. This is nothing personal.’ I’m like, It ispersonal,” said Garcia. “I’m fed up with it.”

The videos and the social media posts have led to threats, Garcia said. In testimony submitted to a U.S. Senate committee this week, he included pages of screenshots of hostile social media posts and recounted a night in November 2020, after the election, when he and his wife realized their address had been posted online.

“To this day, not a single person or entity has been held accountable for the impact this whole situation had on my family and myself,” Garcia said in his testimony.

The Tarrant County group’s intimidation efforts aren’t stopping Garcia or other election workers from fulfilling their duties.

When Citizens for Election Integrity requested to inspect the paper ballots from the March 2020 GOP primary, Garcia and his staff provided the more than 300,000 ballots and space in the county office to review them. While Garcia would have been within the law to charge the group a fee for the request, he chose not to. The tallying of the ballots by the group was completed last week, though it’s unclear what, if anything, the group found. Election administrators in other counties have received similar requests to inspect ballots and have heard of door-knocking concerns.

A review of Tarrant County Commissioners Court meetings shows that volunteers have shown up at almost every single meeting since the beginning of the year, lodging repetitive complaints with hazy origins. Meetings in other counties, including Collin County and Harris County, have been similarly bogged down with these grievances.

The comments are almost identical: Speakers say there’s a need for more and independently done audits of elections in Texas. They ask to eliminate electronic voting systems and use only paper, and demand precinct-based polling places rather than countywide vote centers.

Tarrant County Judge B. Glen Whitley said he has been on the commissioners court since 1997 and has been a county judge since 2007, and has never seen the public question the integrity of elections in this way. The ongoing stream of speakers in Tarrant County prompted the court to ask Garcia for a presentation to explain elections to the public. “There were so many misstatements occurring in those public comments,” said Whitley. “So we felt like it was important to bring folks together to be able to describe [the election process] step by step.”

In April, Garcia did so. The County Commissioners Courtroom was filled to the brim, with members of the public spilling into the hallway. More than 30 people signed up to speak, many unmoved by Garcia’s explanations. “Stealing elections is stealing our country,” said one speaker, her voice shaking. “We may like big everything, but I don’t think big voting is good any longer.”

Buff Kizer — the part-time chaplain from Fort Worth who’d sent emails to Scott — spoke as well. “The manufacture of even one vote in Tarrant County is not okay,” Kizer said. “This is breaking God’s commandments and it’s something that none of us want to see.”

But that day, there were also many speakers, including election clerks, judges, ballot board members, and poll workers who expressed confidence in the system. The attacks and false claims are wearing on election workers in the county, and some said the continued onslaught is beginning to feel more and more like a personal affront.

“There are thousands and thousands of people, not the election clerks, not even candidates who work elections in our county,” Kate Duffy, a Tarrant County election judge, said to those gathered.

“There’s the pastors who make coffee really early in the morning. There’s the janitors who clean up the schools afterwards. There’s the librarians who set aside their space. And I think it’s a slap in all of our faces to say our elections are not run with good intent.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/voter-fraud/

ProPublica

His last night as a prisoner in North Florida, Kelvin Bolton couldn’t sleep. Fifty-five years old, with a wispy goatee the same color as the gray flecks in his hair, he was about to get out after serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for theft and battery. The last time he’d seen his brothers and sisters at a big family gathering, he’d marched onto the dance floor ostentatiously, turned away and wrapped his arms around himself to caress his own back. As he swayed goofily to the music, everybody laughed.

Now Bolton was so close to being free and seeing his family again. The next morning, a bright Wednesday in April, he was already dressed in his street clothes and cleared to go when the woman processing his paperwork stopped him.

“The lady said, ‘Hold on, you can’t go anywhere,’” Bolton remembered in a recent phone call.

Confused, he asked her what was going on, he recalled. There was a warrant out for his arrest for incidents in 2020, she explained gruffly. But that was impossible. He’d been in jail at the time, awaiting his prison stint.

Guards loaded Bolton into a van, then drove an hour and a half south to deposit him in Alachua County Jail.

There, he found out what he’d done wrong.

He’d voted.

In 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 4, in a historic ballot initiative that restored the right to vote to most state residents with felony convictions. Until then, Florida had been one of only four states — the others were Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — where people who had committed felonies needed to petition the governor to have their voting rights restored. It was a grim legacy of 19th-century laws passed after the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote.

Supporters applauded the law as restoring voting rights to what experts estimate is over 1 million people in Florida, about 5% of the population of the state.

But the state’s dominant Republican lawmakers quickly installed a financial hurdle to those new rights. The following year, they passed a law to clarify that people convicted of felonies could only vote if they first paid off any money they owed for committing their crimes. The penalty for registering or voting without doing so: a felony charge for voter fraud.

On the surface, the mandate seemed reasonable: Even advocates for Amendment 4 agreed that requiring paying off fines and restitution to victims was just. In Florida, however, that task proved a sometimes insurmountable challenge — one that disproportionately hit Black people. Florida has no centralized database to allow people to figure out what legal financial obligations they owe to the state. Instead, its 67 counties and various state agencies each maintain their own databases. The state also does not track information for federal or out-of-state convictions, which people are also required to pay off before voting.

On top of the fines and restitution, Florida layers on court fees that can run into the hundreds of dollars. Together, a voter’s debt can run into the thousands, a financial hole that some may never climb out of.

“That’s kind of the bottom line of the absurdity of this — it’s Kafkaesque,” said Dan Smith, chair of the political science department at the University of Florida. “It’s very troubling that we would have state attorneys prosecuting individuals who did not know their status, and there was no way for them to determine their status.”

Florida’s voting hurdles are part of a national pattern. For years across the country, Republican state lawmakers have been implementing new restrictive voting laws, including reducing access to vote-by-mail ballots, stricter voter identification rules and limits on early voting. These efforts have accelerated since Donald Trump promoted the false claims that Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election. Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed to expand voting access.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted that in 2020, Florida, a swing state with a history of contentious elections, “held the smoothest, most successful election of any state in the country,” while he also signed a flurry of voting law changes that he said would further strengthen the integrity of future votes. And DeSantis has tacitly endorsed prosecuting people convicted of felonies for voter fraud. In April, he signed a bill establishing the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which will investigate alleged election violations.

Despite the increased scrutiny, voting fraud remains so rare in Florida that it hasn’t come close to altering election outcomes. The Florida Department of State in 2020 received 262 election fraud complaints, just 75 of which were referred to law enforcement or prosecuting authorities, according to the agency.

“Florida is an outlier, because the intentional targeting of citizens with felony convictions as a way to undermine democracy has been a throughline in that state,” said Nicole Porter, senior director of advocacy for the Sentencing Project. “And the attempt to address that, by popular vote, has been undermined by the legislature.”

In 2020, a representative of the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections conducted a series of outreach efforts at the local county jail to let inmates know of their new rights and offer to help them add their names to the voter rolls.

During three visits to the jail, the official helped sign up at least 10 inmates, including John Boyd Rivers, Dedrick Baldwin and Bolton.

Rivers, 44, felt a visceral thrill at the prospect. Sitting in his cell in February 2020 facing a battery charge for hitting his wife, he was told by the county representative that he could register to vote. The official, he said, told him that he could disregard the check box on the form that asks whether the applicant has a felony conviction because he didn’t have a disqualifying felony. That seemed odd to Rivers, since he had a previous felony conviction. (He subsequently was sentenced for the battery charge.) No one told him anything about needing to pay off his financial obligations before registering to vote, Rivers said, and the jail didn’t give him an accounting of those debts when he was later released.

Back at home, Rivers was excited when his voter registration card arrived in the mail. He’d lost his right to vote at 18, he said, after voting just once. Now he could vote in a presidential election. He and his wife went to their polling place, and he cast his vote for Donald Trump.

Bolton, too, was excited to sign up. He also said no one told him he’d need to pay off his debts before casting his ballot. Although he registered as a Republican, he said he decided to vote for Biden.

In all, 10 of the men who the official helped register to vote have been charged with voter fraud on the grounds they were ineligible.

Their alleged illegal voting was first spotted by a citizen who analyzed Florida’s voting rolls and then shared the information with the state. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement subsequently launched an eight-month investigation, after which it identified the 10 inmates.

State investigators found that some jail employees remembered the elections official giving clear directions to inmates about having to pay off financial obligations, while others did not. The investigation concluded that the jail visits were “lacking in both quality and longevity” and “showed a haphazard registration of inmates.” But the state prosecutor nevertheless proceeded with charges, although not against county officials.

Officials at the Alachua Supervisor of Elections office declined to comment to ProPublica. But Supervisor of Elections Kim Barton denied any wrongdoing in a statement released in June.

Brian Kramer, the state attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, defended his office’s prosecutions to ProPublica, saying he believed the 10 men knew they were committing fraud. “I’m not going to say I will prosecute or not prosecute because it’s politically popular or unpopular,” he said.

Four of the 10 have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced to between 364 days and three years in prison. Bolton and three others have vowed to go to trial, while the remaining two await arraignment. They face charges that carry a penalty of up to five years in prison, five years of probation or $5,000 in fines. Eight of the men are Black, and two are white.

Critics say the charges are unjust and, at a bare minimum, excessive. In nearby Lake County, the state prosecutor declined to bring charges against sex offenders who had registered to vote despite the law prohibiting voting rights restoration for those charged with sex offenses or murder. In April, two white men living in The Villages in Sumter County, an overwhelmingly white county in central Florida, pleaded guilty to each casting two ballots for Donald Trump during the 2020 election. Rather than face prosecution, they entered a pretrial intervention program, under which they must serve 50 hours of community service and attend an adult civics class, among other requirements. Because the men in Alachua County have prior felony convictions, they are ineligible for pretrial intervention and face harsher sentences.

“I’m thinking I’m doing something good for the community, so that’s why I chose to try to do it,” Bolton said. “It was not malicious — I was not trying to commit a felony of voting fraud. I never would have voted.”

Baldwin, 47, who is in prison on a manslaughter conviction, was sentenced to an additional 364 days. He felt “set up,” he said, since nobody told him he wasn’t eligible.

“There’s no way Biden was that important to me to vote for him,” he said in an email to ProPublica from prison. “We were flat out tricked into voting.”

The elections official who visited the jail denied telling the men that they could disregard the check box and said he warned them that they’d need to pay off their financial obligations, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named because he feared reprisals. The elections official declined to comment to ProPublica on the record.

The voter fraud charges were especially bitter for Rivers. By the time they were filed, Rivers said, he had already used part of his federal stimulus check to pay off more than $3,000 in costs related to his criminal record so he could reinstate his driver’s license and return to work.

“I should have known there would be some kind of catch,” Rivers said.

Florida’s history of felon disenfranchisement dates back to 1838,when the state’s first constitution prohibited people convicted of bribery or assorted “high crimes and misdemeanors” from voting. After the Civil War, faced with the prospect of formerly enslaved Black men voting, the state expanded the law so that anyone convicted of a felony lost the franchise. But in 2018, 64% of Florida voters approved Amendment 4, allowing people convicted of felonies, except for murder or sexual offense convictions, to vote.

This embrace of new voters became more complicated the following year when the state legislature passed its law. It required that people convicted of felonies must determine their own eligibility before registering to vote. The Florida Department of Corrections and county detention facilities are required to provide notice to inmates at the time of their release of their outstanding financial obligations.

But it is unclear if all of the facilities do so.

Florida charges those convicted of crimes with an array of fines and fees, some of which statutorily cannot be eliminated or reduced. Defendants facing felony charges are assessed $100 to use a public defender, as well as a $100 prosecution fee. At least one person already sentenced in the Alachua County cases has been charged an additional $671 for his voting fraud charges on top of the financial obligations he already owed.

Finding out what someone owes is time-consuming and expensive. An analysis led by Traci Burch, a political science professor at Northwestern University, tried to determine the legal financial obligations owed by a random sample of 153 Florida residents convicted of felonies and found consistent information for only three of them. Counties often keep poor records, have cumbersome websites and employ unhelpful clerks.

What’s more, it can cost money merely to find out how much money you owe. Four in 10 Florida counties charged either a payment or processing fee to look at their databases, and 15% charged a fee to access certain records, according to Burch’s research.

In 2020, Smith, the Florida political scientist, estimated that just over 1 million people would be eligible to vote under Amendment 4. Of that number, about 77% had outstanding legal financial obligations, rendering them ineligible to vote under Florida’s new law until they paid their debts. Four out of five Floridians with felony convictions owed at least $500 in fines and fees, Smith’s analysis found. More than 59% owed more than $1,000.

The state legislature immediately disqualified about 750,000 people from being able to vote when it passed its law requiring people convicted of felonies to pay their debts first, Smith estimated. And the new law’s impact was felt much more harshly by Black people, who faced greater fines and fees: 26% of white Floridians with a felony conviction would be eligible to get their voting rights restored under the new requirement, but only 18% of Black people, according to Smith.

In May 2020, a district court judge ruled that parts of the law were unconstitutional and that the law had established a pay-to-vote system. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling the following September, saying it was in the state’s power to require the payoffs and the law didn’t violate people’s rights. The state Supreme Court has also issued an advisory opinion that deemed the law legitimate.

Unsurprisingly, the number of people with felony convictions who have registered to vote has fallen far short of what supporters hoped. More than 85,000 such people registered in Florida ahead of the 2020 election.

Supporters of the law say that it’s only fair to have people fulfill their full sentences, including paying any crime-related debts. Some state attorneys, including Kramer, the attorney prosecuting the Alachua cases, have also developed processes within their jurisdictions by which people with felony convictions can verify their voting eligibility or request to reduce their fines and fees.

Felons who have not yet registered to vote can also appeal to the state to have certain fees reduced or eliminated, said Republican State Sen. Jeff Brandes, the sponsor of the law demanding the payoffs before voting rights restoration.

“We truly believe there are people who are indigent that will just simply never be able to pay,” he said. “The court only collects a fraction of what is given out anyways. And so there should be a way for the state to grant some grace or for the court to grant some grace and provide people flexibility.”

Kelvin Bolton has been sitting in the Alachua Council Jail since April, waiting for his case to proceed.

He’s been in and out of the system since he was 16, piling up a long record of mostly nonviolent crimes, most recently for stealing a car, groping a woman in a store and taking cigarettes from a Dollar General.

He aims this time to keep a vow he made to his family and himself to stay straight. He said he is frustrated that the prosecutor subsequently created a program for people convicted of felonies to check their voting eligibility while he and the others are still facing charges.

“Why would they want to keep charging us for something that they’re in the wrong for?” he said. “The state is in the wrong for what they did to us.”

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https://www.ajc.com/politics/what-2000-mules-leaves-out-from-ballot-harvesting-claims/

no lnx pix

What ‘2000 Mules’ leaves out of ballot harvesting claims

POLITICS

By Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

May 10, 2022

Proof missing from Georgia videos and cellphone data

A new movie spreading suspicions of voter fraud, “2000 Mules,” shows surveillance video of Georgia voters dropping off multiple ballots.

Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza says that’s a crime, suggesting that a network of unnamed “mules” rigged the presidential election for Democrat Joe Biden and against Republican Donald Trump.

Based on these unproven allegations, the documentary-style movie jumps to the conclusion that the election was stolen.

The hour and a half-long film leaves voters uninformed about precautions that help prevent mass absentee ballot fraud, instead encouraging them to believe elections were subverted by a shadowy cabal of nonprofit organizations.

The movie hinges on the theory that 2,000 people in five states, including 242 in metro Atlanta, collected and delivered multiple absentee ballots, a practice called “ballot harvesting.” Georgia law prohibits voters from delivering anyone’s ballot besides their own, with exceptions for family members and caregivers of disabled voters.

The movie "2000 Mules" includes video surveillance of a Fulton County ballot drop box that shows a man delivering ballots at night during the 2020 presidential election.

Credit: 2000 Mules

While it’s possible that some of the alleged perpetrators shown in the movie actually committed a crime, video surveillance of drop boxes alone doesn’t prove anything. Voters might have been delivering ballots for their relatives, which is allowed.

Even if there were a ballot harvesting scheme, it wouldn’t invalidate legitimate ballots just because they were turned in by unauthorized individuals. Verified ballots of registered voters still count, regardless of how they were delivered.

Election investigators have reviewed several videos included in “2000 Mules” and found no illegal behavior, including a video that showed a Gwinnett County man inserting ballots into a drop box, according to the secretary of state’s office.

“We investigated, and the five ballots that he turned in were all for himself and his family members,” said Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffenspergerduring a debate last week.

In the movie, D’Souza promotes allegations made by True the Vote, a Texas-based organization that gathered drop box surveillance video and cellphone location data in parts of Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All were swing states where Biden won.

True the Vote hasn’t cooperated with Georgia’s election investigations, refusing to disclose the names of people who allegedly harvested ballots. The State Election Board issued subpoenas on the organization last month to seek documents, recordings and names of individuals involved.

The organization also doesn’t explain how ballot harvesting could have occurred.

Every absentee ballot is assigned to the voter who requested it, and voters can only cast one ballot each.

Returned ballots must be included in an envelope that includes the voter’s registration information, signature, and a bar code. Ballots delivered without an envelope aren’t counted, meaning ballot-stuffing wouldn’t work.

True the Vote claims that cellphone location records show that “mules” visited multiple drop boxes in a day, but publicly available location data often aren’t accurate enough to prove that people actually stopped at drop boxes. They could have been driving by drop boxes on busy streets as they travel to and from work.

None of the surveillance videos in the movie shows anyone visiting more than one drop box in a day.

A map of downtown Atlanta displays cellphone travel patterns, but few of them intersect with drop boxes, which were required to be located on government property such as the Fulton County Government Center.

[Explore

From AJC investigation: Five fraud claims from the Georgia 2020 election and what investigators actually found]

A map from the movie "2000 Mules" shows cellphone signals in downtown Atlanta, but most of these paths don't intersect with drop boxes or indicate ballot harvesting.

Credit: 2000 Mules

True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht said in the movie that her organization tracked cellphones that were near both drop boxes and unidentified nonprofit organizations, which she believes coordinated the ballot harvesting operation.

“What does this even mean if this is happening in broad daylight and nobody’s doing anything to stop it?” Engelbrecht said. “It won’t stop unless we stop it.”

The GBI reviewed True the Vote’s allegations last fall and found they lacked sufficient evidence to merit a law enforcement investigation.

“What has not been provided is any other kind of evidence that ties these cellphones to ballot harvesting,” wrote GBI Director Vic Reynolds in a Sept. 30 letter. “As it exists, the data, while curious, does not rise to the level of probable cause that a crime has been committed.”

While the movie blames drop boxes for enabling ballot harvesting, it ignores the fact that multiple ballots could more easily be returned through the Post Office or home mailboxes, where there isn’t video surveillance. There’s no indication of ballot harvesting in mailed ballots during the 2020 election.

D’Souza, the filmmaker and narrator, has produced several movies and books that promote conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda, including “The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left” and “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.”

D’Souza pleaded guilty to a felony campaign finance violation in 2014 for using straw donors to exceed contribution limits to a Republican candidate running for a U.S. Senate seat in New York. Trump pardoned D’Souza in 2018.

The movie, which costs $29.99 to stream online, ends with a QR code that directs voters to a website where they can donate money to True the Vote.

About the Author

ajc.com

Mark Niesse

Mark Niesse covers voting rights and elections for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also reports on the Georgia House of Representatives and government. He has been a reporter at the AJC since 2013 following a decade at The Associated Press in Atlanta, Honolulu and Montgomery, Ala.

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amanda c

https://www.thebulwark.com/dinesh-dsouzas-2000-mules-is-a-hilarious-mockumentary/

dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules is Plandemic for election truthers. For the non-insane, it’s a hilarious mockumentary. Not that D’Souza cares what the non-insane think: He has discovered that there are enough suckers out there to keep him laughing all the way to the bank.

Released by the Salem Media Group,2000 Mules aspires to be a work of serious investigative reporting which will rock the foundations of American democracy. In reality, 2000 Mulesis an investigative documentary in roughly the same way Reno 911 was a hard-hitting look at real-life police work. Though that doesn’t mean that D’Souza’s cash-grab won’t further pollute the political system. For instance, Kari Lake, who can’t wait to get elected governor of Arizona so she can jail her political opponents, is championing the film—which ends with a plea for law enforcement to take up D’Souza’s cause.

Here’s the elevator pitch for 2000 Mules: D’Souza’s buddies at True the Vote spent $2 million on cellphone geotracking data—which he describes as “digital DNA”—that they say proves “mules” were paid to illegally “traffick” thousands of ballots from non-profit “stash houses” into drop-off ballot boxes.

All D’Souza really has—if the cellphone data is real and is really what he represents it as being—is some evidence that some people made frequent trips in areas around ballot drop-off boxes which, by design, were usually placed in heavily-traveled areas for convenience. Putting that aside, who are these mules? Who paid them? Where is the evidence of people making repeated trips to illegally stuff drop-boxes with ballots? What non-profits were involved? These questions are not even asked, let alone answered, in the movie. The theory of the case relies almost entirely on digital maps with dots and squiggles, supposedly demonstrating the questionable movement of the “mules.” Boom-Diggity. All that’s left is for the FBI to take it from here. Or something.

2000 Mules doesn’t survive the most basic fact-checks to support its most important claims. See them here, here, here, and here. But, let’s stipulate that the film’s purpose isn’t really to present facts. Because if it were true that D’Souza had rock-solid evidence of widespread voter fraud in his possession, would a true patriot like him be selling that evidence for $29.99 per download? Bwahahaha. (In defense of D’Souza, that $29.99 was only the premium VOD price. This week he dropped it to $19.99 to buy or just $14.99 to rent. Or you can get the movie free by purchasing an annual subscription to his Rumble channel!)

It’s better to view the film as a performance piece, a comedic triumph where the joke is on the rubes gullible enough to give D’Souza their money.

some quick backstory: The people behind True the Vote—Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips–have been unsuccessfully hunting the Loch Ness Monster of voter fraud for many years. After the 2016 election, Phillips claimed he “verified” that more than 3 million votes were illegally cast by “non-citizens.” Piggybacking on Phillips, Trump launched a “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity” to pursue this and other claims. Chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the commission ultimately found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and disbanded without ever producing a report. (Since producing such a report would contradict Trump’s kooky allies.)

After the 2020 election, True the Vote sought $7 million to chase down new voter fraud stories and shop them to GOP consultants in hopes of getting some courtroom or member of Congress to take them seriously. But even in the cluster that was the Kraken #StopTheSteal show, they had no takers. It was such a disaster that one of True the Vote’s biggest donors, who gifted the organization $2.5 million, took the group to court to get his money back, citing their failed efforts.

All of which goes to say that True the Vote’s tall tales are too dumb even for its biggest supporters to go along with anymore. D’Souza, however, is happy to scrape up the bullshit and repackage it for the direct-to-consumer market.

some of the film’s funniest moments come when D’Souza summons his fellow Salem Media Group talkers—Dennis Prager, Eric Metaxes, Seb Gorka, and Charlie Kirk—for a meeting of the minds to discuss their thoughts about election fraud before and after viewing D’Souza’s movie.

The “before” meeting amounts to an assortment of pronouncements about how none of these very fine people believe that Biden won. They cite the massive turnout in the election, GOP success down-ballot, Trump’s ability to draw large crowds, and apparent popularity in the face of withering media coverage.

Kirk offers that “millions of Americans know something went wrong, and they have little pieces, and no one’s really put it together.” Prager, somewhat of an outlier in the group, says he wants someone to “show me the proof” of fraud. Which sets the stage for D’Souza to helpfully put the pieces together.

The movie draws heavy suspicions about people who dropped off ballots early in the morning, wore gloves to drop off ballots, and took photos of drop boxes. All this is drummed up as proof of nefarious activity captured on surveillance video. Coupled with the True the Vote’s geotracking data, the viewer is led to believe these were the “mules” making repeat trips to unnamed non-profit offices to collect ballots and “traffick” them to drop boxes. One problem: They have no video showing these individuals making repeat trips to said non-profits or drop locations, or evidence they were paid to do so. Also, one of the so-called “mules” presented in the film has already been investigated by Georgia officials and no evidence of wrongdoing was found.

No matter. Engelbrecht and Phillips make their presentation to the group and the guys jump on the clips accordingly. What Salem wants, Salem gets.

Questioning why someone would drop off ballots late at night or early in the morning is a common refrain, even though drop boxes were implemented precisely so voters could drop off their ballots any time they chose. For this, these unnamed individuals are depicted as dangerous people. Phillips described them as “not grandma out walking her dog.” They have “bad backgrounds, bad reputations, we’ve had encounters with several who are not terribly positive.”

“Violent guys?” D’Souza asked.

“Can be,” Phillips replied. “They are interested in one thing, that’s money.”

But even the Salem hosts seem wise to the game and acknowledge that D’Souza hasn’t, and won’t be able to prove anything.Gorka sums it up with this non sequitur: “It’s the perfect crime because it cannot be curated after it’s committed.”

Kirk says: “I don’t think we will ever know the full story and what makes this crime so compelling and unique is that once the ballot enters the system it’s really hard to reverse engineer it. But when you have the cell phone geolocation data and then the actual footage. . . it explains the sudden spike of Biden support that we saw late at night.”

At this point, all that’s left is for law enforcement to intervene. “There’s an easy way to bust it,” D’Souza says. “Law enforcement has to step in . . . go interview the mules. Who paid you? Where did you get the money?”

Which satisfies Prager enough to bellow:

“They have ruined election day in the United States of America. That’s provable, and that is enough for me to fight the left with every fiber in my body!” This counts as a conversion. But, considering the fact Prager is someone who also believes the left is destroying Western civilization ,”:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"/maxresdefault.jpg),” it’s not like he needed any pretext from D’Souza to declare total war on the Democrats. That’s just a regular day at the office for the old man.

the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro2000 Mules and said, “my problem with the documentary” is that “there are dots that need filling in.” He said:

You can question all the ballot harvesting; you can take for granted that all the geolocation data that they’re using is actually true . . . that does not mean all those ballots are illegal votes. . . . . What you need is actual evidence of people going to multiple drop boxes that isn’t just the cell phone data moving past the drop boxes. . . I guess what I would say is an answer that’s gonna make nobody happy. I think that the data is really interesting. I think that it’s really suspicious for sure, I don’t think it’s just positive that this alone shifted the election .. . I think the conclusion of the film is not justified by the premises of the film itself. There are a bunch of dots that need to be connected. Maybe they will be connected, but they haven’t been connected in the film.

But I suspect that D’Souza is delighted with even the critical reviews. A hate watch is still a watch. All the people talking and writing about 2000 Mules means more relevance and more downloads and more income. Despite being released only on “non-cancelable” platforms, D’Souza says the film has grossed $10 million.

What burns D’Souza are the people who won’t give him attention—especially those at Fox News and Newsmax. And why shouldn’t he be? The movie’s storyline, complete with a brown menace subplot, is tailor-made for their audiences. At one point in the film, a woman, who keeps her identity hidden, says she worked as a “mule” in Yuma County, Arizona, on behalf of an organization that collected ballots from Hispanic people who were unable for various reasons to get to the polls. “Most of the Hispanics that live in the town are not well educated as far as the law . . . I call it the Mexican mafia, seriously because they work like that.”

How could Fox and Newsmax resist this premium content? Probably because the executives at these infotainment companies are wary of fighting another round of lawsuits for pushing bogus election claims. Dinesh D’Souza is judgment proof. Fox and Newsmax aren’t.

Donald Trump is mad about the Fox blackout, too. He gave the film a glitzy premiere at Mar-a-Lago, and still, no love from Tucker Carlson. Waaaah.

“Fox News is no longer Fox News,” Trump posted on his Truth Social account. “They won’t even show or discuss the greatest & most impactful documentary of our time, ‘2000 Mules.’The Radical Left Democrats are thrilled – They don’t want the TRUTH to get out.”

In a way, the pairing of 2000 Mules and Truth Social is perfect: A pretend social media company doing PR for a fake documentary, with both siphoning off dollars from gullible superfans.

It would be funny if these people weren’t also the past and possible future of the United States government.

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