Elias, Marc esq

bak? democ docket

attacked by musk fair elections

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dem docket delay OG tx midterm redist ok’d by tx scotus? sued Delay for racketeering

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*in partnership with The Guardian.

In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the [election] system that have eroded our trust”. The ad pledged that “whistleblowers” who shared evidence of election fraud “will be rewarded with payment from our $5m fund”.

This reward was courtesy of a just-announced group, the Fair Election Fund, which has deep connections to Elon Musk’s political network, according to materials obtained by Documented.

The Fair Election Fund pledged that “the bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers” for sharing their stories, and that it would launch “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns” that would “highlight these cases”.

It was followed by another ad that ran in swing states during the Olympics and told viewers “you could be eligible for compensation” for sharing evidence of election fraud.

Despite the group’s high-profile, deep-pocketed backers and lucrative bounty offers, it never revealed any evidence of voter or election fraud. Instead, the group took a series of unrelated detours into tangential areas like third-party ballot access, and its effort to uncover fraud reaffirmed what numerous studies, court rulings and bipartisan investigations have concluded: voter fraud is extremely rare.

Pledge your support

The lack of evidence has not stopped Republicans in Congress and state legislatures from continuing to push restrictive voting laws aimed at addressing this phantom threat. Meanwhile, Musk is claiming that “fraud” justifies his efforts to slash government operations, but similarly has not revealed much evidence.

The Fair Election Fund has now gone radio silent. Sitemap data shows that the website has not been updated since October, and the X/Twitter account for the group has not posted since November. The group’s spokesperson, former representative Doug Collins, became Trump’s veterans affairs secretary, and is now also leading the office of government ethics.

Close ties to world’s richest man

The Fair Election Fund is a fictitious name for another 501(c)(4) non-profit, Documented can reveal, and operates within a network run by Musk’s top political advisers. The group received funding from the same dark-money vehicle Musk has used to channel his political spending, and also routed funds to another Musk-backed non-profit.

The group is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as the For Which It Stands Fund. Formed on 3 January 2023, the non-profit raised $8,226,000 from a single donation in 2023.

The group is led by Victoria “Tori” Sachs, a Republican operative who was also executive director of And to the Republic, a group also formed in January 2023 that supported Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, including by funding DeSantis’s private jets and hosting quasi-campaign events.

The naming of the two Sachs-led groups – And to the Republic and the For Which It Stands Fund – and the timing of their creation in January 2023 suggests that the group that now houses the Fair Election Fund was originally intended to support DeSantis’s run, which Musk initially supported.

Sachs’s involvement continued through 2024, with her name appearing on records that accompanied the Fair Election Fund’s broadcast purchases.

Since 2022, Musk has been secretly channeling his political spending through a dark-money non-profit called Building America’s Future. That group is run by Generra Peck and Phil Cox, two Republican operatives who were involved in DeSantis’s failed presidential bid and now advise Musk. Building America’s Future reportedly backed the Fair Election Fund in 2024. It also provided half of And to the Republic’s overall fundraising in 2023.

The Fair Election Fund has other ties to the Musk advisers who lead Building America’s Future. Cox’s digital marketing firm IMGE LLC, which provides services to several groups in the Musk-backed, Building America Future-tied universe, manages the Fair Election Fund’s Facebook page, and an IMGE employee appears to be responsible for articles on the Fair Election Fund’s website.

The Fair Election Fund/Interstate Priorities also acted as a conduit to support other Musk-backed groups. The group’s 2023 tax return shows that it made a $1,550,000 grant to Citizens for Sanity, which Musk funded in 2022 through Building America’s Future, and which aired racist and transphobic ads that election cycle. That grant made up almost the entirety of Citizens for Sanity’s funding in 2023.

Pledge your support

In the 2024 election cycle, Musk publicly disclosed at least $277m in political contributions to Super Pacs that worked to elect President Trump and other Republicans. It is not known how much he may have given to other politically active groups that disguise their donors.

A detour into third-party ballot access

The Fair Election Fund’s goal of exposing election fraud seemingly turned up nothing of significance.

Out of its $5m fund, the group announced $75,000 in “bounty” payments, releasing $50,000 in July 2024 and $25,000 in September 2024. The Fair Election Fund promised that it would “highlight” the election fraud stories it gathered through these payments via “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns”, but it never did so, which suggests that none of the evidence generated was consequential or credible.

Instead, the group took a detour in July 2024: it launched a $175,000 ad “blitz” targeting North Carolina state board of election (NCSBE) members who delayed placing third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F Kennedy Jr on the ballot. At the time, Republicans and their allies believed that West and Kennedy would act as spoilers to help Trump, by siphoning left-leaning votes away from the Democratic presidential nominee.

Ironically, the NCSBE had delayed a decision on West’s and Kennedy’s ballot eligibility based on evidence that petitions were obtained through fraudulent means – concerns that would seem to align with the Fair Election Fund’s stated mission of exposing election fraud.

The Fair Election Fund ads declared that the Democratic members of the NCSBE were “blocking your voting rights”, and offered a reward for evidence of the members’ “shady backroom deal”. The group also projected images on the side of the NCSBE’s building, and drove mobile billboards around the agency’s headquarters.

The Fair Election Fund also ran digital ads in North Carolina featuring Black voters, some of which asserted that “African American voices are not being heard”, while others declared “Support Equality, Support Inclusion, Support [Cornel West’s] Justice for All Party”. The group pushed similar efforts in states such as Michigan.

Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who sought to keep West off of ballots in North Carolina and elsewhere, was a frequent target of the group. In October 2024, the group announced that it would be running a six-figure ad buy to “troll” Elias. The ads included mobile billboards around the Elias Law Group office as well as a full-page ad in the Washington Post, which declared: “We beat Marc Elias and his racist voter suppression lawsuits … He tried to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who support Cornel West, but the Fair Election Fund stopped him.”

The Fair Election Fund then veered into a series of efforts to chase other trending rightwing conspiracy theories.

For example, over the summer, the Fair Election Fund seized on to a far-fetched conspiracy theory about the online fundraising platform ActBlue, claiming to have found “60,000 potential discrepancies” in ActBlue-facilitated contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign, based on an investigation conducted “from late July to early August”. The group claimed to have “spent $250,000 on these initial findings” – a jaw-dropping sum to spend on a brief review of campaign finance records.

The group then announced a $50,000 ad buy in several swing states soliciting evidence from people who claim to have been “defrauded by ActBlue”. No evidence from this “investigation” has been made public.

In fall 2024, as conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting gained momentum, the Fair Election Fund announced that it would be launching a “six-figure investigation into noncitizen voting in seven key swing states”. The results of this “six-figure investigation” were never made public.

You’re on the free list for*The Shakedown

===

Article III Project founder Mike Davis suggests leading voting rights lawyer is being funded by Iran and China

Davis: “George Soros may have a say at funding. I just can imagine that would happen. And maybe Iran, maybe China. I say that, kind of, half-jokingly.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 10/22/24

Video pix of bossie w relig icons

RSS

CitationFrom the October 22, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

DAVID BOSSIE (HOST): Marc Elias — most of people on, you know, in America have never heard of. He is an invisible hand. And I think you're exactly right. He is incredibly smart, vicious, and talented. You know, say it for what it is. He is — and he's completely dedicated to it. But he's also — maybe you know. How does — how has this been organized and funded? How has Elias's operations over the last many years been funded? Do you know, Mike?

MIKE DAVIS (GUEST): I would imagine that George Soros may have a say at funding. I just can imagine that would happen. And maybe Iran, maybe China. I say that, kind of, half-jokingly, but I would say that —

BOSSIE: The Soros part is right. Yeah. The Soros part is right.

DAVIS: I would imagine that George Soros is giving him a blank check.

The acolytes of former President Donald Trump sitting on the Georgia State Election Board just suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.

ABC News reported Tuesday that McBurney's decision still requires all county election officials to certify election results by the statutory deadline even if they feel the need to investigate the conduct of elections. The decision slams the door on a previous ruling by the state election board aimed at making it easier for members of county election boards to refuse certification if they suspect fraud.

"No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance," McBurney wrote in the decision.

McBurney's ruling was celebrated by various legal experts on X (formerly Twitter) after Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias announced McBurney's decision on his website, Democracy Docket. Elias, who helped Democrats argue the case in court, called it "a big defeat for election deniers in Georgia."

"Huge victory for democracy," tweeted Tristan Snell, a former prosecutor with the New York Attorney General's Office. "Huge defeat for Trump's attempts to scuttle the election."

TV producer Morgan J. Freeman (not the actor) praised the ruling as "HUGE" and celebrated that "Georgia is NOT allowing Donald Trump to CHEAT." Bestselling author Nicole Perlroth observed that while it was "absurd this had to be fought in court," McBurney's decision was a "victory for democracy nonetheless."

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance also noted the significance of McBurney's decision, mentioning that Trump has for years attempted to throw a wrench into the gears of the certification process. She noted that the January 6, 2021 insurrection was, at its core, an attempt to interrupt certification of an election whose result was unfavorable for Trump.

"Trump tried to get his VP to interfere with certifying the vote on Jan 6 2021," she wrote. "Since that didn't work, there's now a move to interfere with certification at the state/county level. A Fulton County judge just ruled that can't be done. Certifying vote counts is purely ministerial."

On the social media platform Bluesky, Darin Self — an assistant political science professor at Brigham Young University — took a different tone. He lamented that American democracy was in such a perilous state that "a judge has to tell officials, yes, you do actually have to count the votes."

The decision was notably handed down on the same day that early voting began in the Peach State. Former New York Daily News and Boston Herald journalist Helen Kennedy reminded her Bluesky followers that former President Jimmy Carter — who recently turned 100 years old — achieved his goal of hanging on long enough to cast his Georgia ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris.

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// an 9 24

In a deep dive into plans by pro-Donald Trump lawyers to flood the courts with lawsuits and challenges should their man lose to Vice President Kamala Harris in November, one former White House and Trump lawyer claimed there is a major flaw they will have to deal with.

As the New York Times is reporting, conservative lawyers have already filed a wave of lawsuits designed to exclude voters under the guise of potential election fraud, primarily focusing their efforts of key battleground states that will likely decide who is victorious.

According to the report, there is very little evidence that there has been wide-scale voter fraud. Nonetheless, conservative lawyers have unleashed an "onslaught of litigation, much of it landing in recent weeks, includes nearly 90 lawsuits filed across the country by Republican groups this year. The legal push is already more than three times the number of lawsuits filed before Election Day in 2020, according to Democracy Docket, a Democratically aligned group that tracks election cases."

As the report notes, the roadmap for contesting a potential GOP loss will hinge on proving fraud which is where pro-Trump forces may run into the same problems they encountered when challenging the 2020 election results that led to a series of court defeats.

As former Trump attorney Ty Cobb sees it, he expects the same in 2024 despite all the preparation.

“The one thing they need in court is evidence,” Cobb explained. “They didn’t have any last time, and they’re unlikely to have any this time.”

The Times report adds, "Election experts, including some Republicans, say a vast majority of the cases are destined to fail, either because they were filed too late or because they are based on unfounded, or outright false, claims."

You can read more here.

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Project 2025 contributor asks Trump if the assassination attempt on him could have been an “inside job”

Trump told Monica Crowley: “There's so many things going on here that you do have to wonder. ... I wasn't thinking this way three weeks ago. But the more you see it, the more you start to say there could be something else.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 08/30/24

Project 2025 is a massive right-wing plan led by the Heritage Foundation to provide policy and staffing to a future Republican president. Monica Crowley is a former Trump administration official and right-wing media figure touted for a position in a second Trump term; she is listed as a contributor in the Project 2025 policy book, Mandate for Leadership.

On August 29, Crowley interviewed former President Donald Trump on her podcast, with the two discussing the possibility that the assassination attempt was an “inside job.”

Video

CitationFrom the August 29, 2024, edition of The Monica Crowley Podcast, streamed on Rumble

MONICA CROWLEY (HOST): Two final questions for you, Mr. President, with regard to the assassination attempt. The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks. It looks like the three-letter agencies are slow walking a lot of this evidence, a lot of the videos, etc. Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious — maybe even inside job?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, it's strange. The father hired the most expensive lawyer, and he lives in the area, supposedly not very much money. He hired the most expensive lawyer. Think of this. Who's paying for this lawyer in Pennsylvania? High end, very, very expensive lawyer, top of the line, right? You know, where does he get the money to hire a lawyer that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars? Is the lawyer doing it for free? I doubt it. Are the Democrats paying for his legal fees? Is Marc Elias involved and that group? Is Weissmann involved? I don't know. Maybe they are. Maybe they're not. But who's paying for this lawyer?

Then you have the case of all of these apps that they can't get open. They can't get his phones open. And, you know, it's very suspicious, very suspicious. Why can't they get the apps open? Why can't the FBI get the apps open? Don't forget the head of the FBI said I may have been hit by shrapnel or some flying glass, OK? And that was even disputed by — all you have to do is take a look at it. They've shown it 50 different ways, 200 different ways, but that was their first — you know, he may have been hit by some shrapnel, you know, to maybe just grazed by a little shrapnel, and they knew that wasn't true.

So you say, why did they say that? Why did the director say that? Because that was so far off. He met with a tremendous — I mean, even his own side said, “You can't say that. There was no glass.” He's — I guess he said maybe the teleprompter. It's not even glass. It's something else. But, it wasn't broken. But, you know, you say, why did he say that?

There's so many things going on here that you do have to wonder. You do have to wonder. But they have apps or they have some things, and they're foreign-based from what I understand. And you say, like, why is it that they can't get them open? Apple should open them easily. You know, when they were going after you and all your friends, they were able to open up their phones very easily, right? But for an assassin, they can't get their phones open. I think those phones ought to be opened by this afternoon because they're foreign based.

And I think they ought to get — and I think they ought to find out who's paying for the lawyer, where's the money coming from, because I wasn't thinking this way three weeks ago. But the more you see it, the more you start to say there could be something else, and that's really dangerous for the country. So, you know, I think they should clear up all that. This shouldn't be like the Kennedy where they're waiting for so many years. I'll be opening that up, like, on my first week, but, you know, they have — everybody waits for it, the Kennedy assassination. This shouldn't be that. They should have all the facts. And, you know, it's harder to get the facts as time goes by, but they ought to get those phones open, and they ought to find out who he's been speaking to. That's what I think.

CROWLEY: Well, you know, 60 years later, we're still talking about the Kennedy assassination, right?

TRUMP: Yeah.

CROWLEY: But you were shot five or six weeks ago, and the imperial media, the regime, they've all buried it. They don't want anybody talking about it, which also lends credence to this idea that this is very suspicious —

TRUMP: Yeah, true.

CROWLEY: — and could have been an inside job. Before —

TRUMP: They don't wanna talk about it.

CROWLEY: No, of course not.

TRUMP: They don't wanna talk about it.

CROWLEY: Of course not. Which also —

TRUMP: Tells you bad things.

CROWLEY: It raises big suspicions.

TRUMP: Well they didn't wanna talk about the election of 2020 either.

CROWLEY: Right.

TRUMP: They just don't wanna talk about it because they know they're guilty as hell. And the only way you can stop it — it's amazing. People that want to have a fair election are indicted. The people that cheated on the election are allowed to keep cheating.

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an 8 24

a variety of election law experts, from Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias to UCLA law professor Rick L. Hasen, have been warning that if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, he is certain to fight the election results.

In an article published on August 26, Business Insider's Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert details the post-election fight that Democratic and GOP lawyers are gearing up for.

"This year's election is shaping up to be decided in court, rather than the ballot box, legal experts told Business Insider, and both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are preparing for a nasty legal battle to duke it out," Tangalakis-Lippert explains. "Republican groups, both formally and informally aligned with Trump, are preparing to challenge the outcome of the election in multiple battleground states."

Tangalakis-Lippert describes the actions that that MAGA Republicans have been taking in key swing states like Georgia and Arizona.

"The Guardian reported that Trump allies in Georgia have adopted new rules for the state's election board, allowing members to potentially delay certification of the election over undefined inquiries into ballot discrepancies," the Business Insider reporter notes. "In Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, the GOP has pushed for voter rolls to be purged despite established federal limits on doing so in the months before the election, per The Washington Post."

Tangalakis-Lippert adds, "Republicans in Nevada also filed a suit to prevent mail-in ballots from being counted if they're received after Election Day, though the legal rationale behind the suit has been dismissed repeatedly by courts in the past, the outlet noted."

Syracuse University law professor David Driesen warns that post-election battles could be especially intense in swing states.

Driesen told Business Insider, "You now have, in the swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, about 70 election deniers and commissions that are supposed to count the electoral votes, and already there have been about 20 cases where officials in recent elections have refused or delayed certification of results. So what Trump is going to do is claim some kind of fraud and then try to get the officials who believe him to delay or prevent certification on election results…. Or, at least, in a lot of litigation chaos, it could end up putting things in the House of Representatives or to the Supreme Court — which is in Trump's pocket."

Driesen added, "I think (that) the strategy is to try to prevent certification of Harris victories in the swing states where there are substantial numbers of election-law deniers. And sometimes, they may also try to have state legislatures certify alternative slates of electors, using the inability to certify as an approach."

READ MORE:[Former Trump officials consider loyalist Kash Patel especially 'dangerous': report

*Read Business Insider's full report at this link (subscription required).

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earlier this week, Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias predicted in an interview with *Rolling Stone*that pro-Donald Trump election officials across the country — in seven battleground states — are expected to refuse their duty of certifying results in November.

"'I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election' in November," the Democracy Docket founder told Rolling Stone."Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared."

Speaking with MSNBC contributor and podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen Thursday, Elias sent a warning to GOP election officials.

"If you're a Republican county official — do your job," the Democratic lawyer said. "If you're not prepared to do your job, to administer fair elections to certify accurate results, now is the time to resign. Get out of office. You're not cut out for the job you've been given. If you cannot celebrate democracy and the outcome of free and fair elections, regardless of whether the candidate you support won or lost — you're in the wrong business. Leave the election business and go do something else."

Elias emphasized, "But if you stay in this job, if you choose to be in a position to administer elections and to certify the election results, and you don't do your job, you're gonna get sued. And you're gonna lose. And you're gonna go down in history as one of the villains in American history. And that is true for the county election officials, it is true for the state election officials, and, by the way, it is true for those Republican members of Congress listening: If you can't accept the outcome of free and fair elections — shame on you. Go find another line of work."

In April, the Bulwark's AB Stoddard reported, "Delay is critical to every part of the Trump strategy if Biden wins in November—delay verifying ballots, delay with recounts, delay with audits."

Goddard also noted that in Rich Lowry's column published by the National Review column in March, he wrote, "we can stipulate that if Trump loses in November he won’t concede the election and, in all likelihood, will engage in the same kind of pressure campaign to change the results as he did in 2020."

Watch the video below or at this link.

Just as some Republican election officials across the nation assisted Donald Trump with his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, "at least 70" of the former president's allies are expected to do the same in November, according to results from an investigation by Rolling Stone published Monday.

Per Rolling Stone, "Republicans have refused to certify election results at least 25 times since Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden."

The publication reports:

Rolling Stone and American Doom compiled its list of election denying election officials by culling media reports about refusals to certify results and other denialist behavior — and by searching the social media profiles of hundreds of election officials in the six swing states.

The investigation revealed hundreds of posts from officials expressing belief in lies about the 2020 election and skepticism about November, as well as myriad posts about every right-wing culture war issue and conspiracy theory imaginable — a veritable stew simmering with the toxicity of the online American right.

"'I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election' in November," Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias told Rolling Stone. "Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared."

In partnership with American Doom — 'a newsletter that focuses on right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy" — Rolling Stone "compiled its list of election denying election officials by culling media reports about refusals to certify results and other denialist behavior — and by searching the social media profiles of hundreds of election officials in the six swing states."

Pickens County, Georgia election official Larry Brown posted, "I don’t trust the runoff," just "two weeks after the 2020 election, as Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock faced Republican Kelly Loeffler in a runoff."

Additionally, Gwinnett County, Georgia official David Hancock wrote on Facebook earlier this year: "At this moment there are NO guidelines on what is required to certify an election in Georgia. But some of us are working to change that. Stand by."

Rolling Stone also notes:

On June 11, Republican Clara Andriola, who was expelled from her local party for not towing the line on election denialism, faced off against Mark Lawson, a former firefighter who was fired for possession and distribution of steroids and who has questioned the results of the 2020 election. Andriola won, but local Republicans cited problems with mail-in ballots — and a bizarre claim about someone in a vote-counting room with a thumb drive — as evidence of fraud. On June 21, Washoe County commissioners Michael Clark and Jeanne Herman, both Republicans, voted against certifying the results of the primary. Andriola voted with the commission’s two Democrats to certify results, which showed her beating Lawson by 1,725 votes.

Per the publication, Elias "believes the findings in this investigation only represent 'the tip of the iceberg,' because Republicans 'are counting on not just that they can disrupt the election in big counties, they are counting on the fact that if they don’t certify in several small counties, you cannot certify these statewide results.'"

Rolling Stone's full report is available here(subscription required).

an 7 24

Only three days after Donald Trump gave his presidential acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee — and eight days after Trump survived an assassination attempt — the United States' already-turbulent presidential race was rocked by another major development: President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

Inan article published on July 22, Wired's David Gilbert emphasizes that Biden's announcement has sent MAGA conspiracy theorists into overdrive.

On X, formerly Twitter, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), for example, posted, "The Democrat Party forced the Democrat nominee off the ballot, just over 100 days before the election."

Gilbert notes, however, that Biden was the presumptive nominee — not the official nominee, as the 2024 Democratic National Convention isn't until August.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) tweeted, "Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes. Donald Trump took a bullet for democracy."

Similarly, far-right Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) tweeted, "The coup is complete."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) echoed the "coup" theme as well, tweeting, "There's a soft civil war happening in the deep state and the elites in power. The Democrats, the IC (intelligence community), and their activists in the media have been lying to us saying there's nothing wrong with Biden for years. Next, they start a coup against him demanding he drop out of the race when they couldn’t hide it anymore."

But attorney Marc Elias, known for his expertise on elections, pointed out that there is nothing coup-like about replacing Biden with another candidate before the Democratic convention.

Responding to Speaker Johnson's post, Elias tweeted, "If your lawyers are telling you that they can prevent the DNC from nominating its candidate of choice, they are idiots."

Media Matters for America names counsel in X Corp. v. Media Matters for America

:{:{WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Media Matters for America named Elias Law Group as counsel in the case of *X Corp. v. Media Matters for America}:

On Monday, November 20, X Corp. sued Media Matters for America following publication of a report which revealed that ads for major brands appeared on X next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, despite CEO Linda Yaccarino’s claims that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts on the platform.

Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said, “Media Matters stands by its reporting. This case is not only significant for us, but has major First Amendment implications for all. With Elias Law Group, we look forward to continuing our work unabated and ultimately winning in court."

Abha Khanna, Partner, Elias Law Group, added, “Elias Law Group is proud to represent Media Matters for America in this case. X Corp.’s lawsuit against MMFA is a clear attempt to bully and silence anyone who dares to hold them accountable. X Corp. has fallen far short of its commitment to protect its users and advertisers from hateful, extremist content. We look forward to ensuring that MMFA is able to continue its important work."

Media Matters for America is a nonprofit media watchdog dedicated to monitoring and exposing conservative misinformation. Through real-time monitoring, comprehensive research and analysis, and rapid response work, Media Matters combats lies, propaganda, and extremism to ensure that all Americans have access to truthful information.

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Pro-Hitler and Holocaust denier account: X has paid me $3,000 in ad revenue sharing | Media Matters for America

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email info@elias.law or call (202) 968-4490.

Abha Khanna, Partner, Elias Law Group perkins coie

abha-khanna-2a00b67

Naima Mohamed

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Phone: 1-202-987-5729

Email: nmohamed@elias.law

Zach Stern

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Phone: 202-998-8658

Email: zstern@elias.law

Jeff Wilcox

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Phone: 1-202-985-3532

Email: jwilcox@elias.law

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so he claims pro free sp absolutist and presumably pro captialism invis hand, but frames this as blackmail (they think they can leverage me? that i care about money? FU i am a man of principle

x-elon-musk-sues-media-matters-antisemitic-ads

libtard rando suggested on twit and he replied interesting? co has lost 1/2 worth since he bought?

Musk's X Corp. sued Media Matters for America for defamation on Monday after the left-leaning nonprofit released a report on ads on X running next to pro-Nazi content and helped trigger an advertiser exodus.

Driving the news:The lawsuit, WHY?, alleged the organization's tactics were manipulative and deceptive.

X alleged that Media Matters "exploited" the platform to have ads appear this way, which included "excessive scrolling" and curating its feed with "fringe" content.
"The overall effect on advertisers and users was to create the false, misleading perception that these types of pairings were common, widespread, and alarming," the lawsuit reads.

What they're saying: X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who has received messages from marketing leaders pushing for her to resign, defended the company in a statement on Monday.

"If you know me, you know I'm committed to truth and fairness," she posted.
"Here's the truth. Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM's, Comcast's, or Oracle's ads next to the content in Media Matters' article. Only 2 users saw Apple's ad next to the content, at least one of which was Media Matters. Data wins over manipulation or allegations. Don't be manipulated. Stand with X." that is show you are smart and loyal to the edgelord

Meanwhile,Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Monday that he is "opening an investigation into Media Matters for potential fraudulent activity," noting Musk's accusation of the organization "manipulating data" on X.

The other side:"This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X's critics into silence. Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court," Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said in a statement on Monday night.

Carusone said over the weekend in response to Musk's threat to sue that far from "the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate."

Yes, but: Advertisers are not just concerned with brand safety on the platform. Musk backing an antisemitic conspiracy theory last week also drew ire from marketing chiefs.

Musk denounced claims that he is antisemitic in a post on X on Sunday. Yaccarino has not acknowledged those concerns in her public remarks or in her recent memo to X employees. KISSED THE RING OF BEBE SLAUGHTERING KIDS IN FLAK JACKET TO PROVE IT

Read the complaint in full, via DocumentCloud:

DocumentCloud

SAYS INCORP IN NAV AND DC? SIGNIF OFFICES TX AG PAXTON

FALSE DEFAM AND MISLEADING

CREATED A SECRET ACCT TO BYPASS SAFEGUARDS

FOLLOW 3O USERS, LESS THAN avg says did not say in method; set acct to pvt [so how does x know content?}:

selective quote politico on intest sabotage guerilla

intentionally interfered with contracts

disparage quality of product

stated as faCT NOT OPINION

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marc Elias — the election attorney who represented the Democratic National Committee in court for more than a decade — is warning that Republican state lawmakers are planning to deploy a "bogus legal theory" to challenge election results in a must-win battleground state.

In a post to his website Democracy Docket, Elias called attention to a Michigan lawsuit Republican legislators filed as a challenge to two constitutional amendments voters in the Mitten State approved in 2018 and 2022. The 2018 amendment expanded voter registration efforts and made it easier for voters to obtain ballots and vote by mail. The 2022 amendment expanded early voting in Michigan and further protected the validity of mail-in ballots.

"GOP plaintiffs and their attorneys want to lay a predicate now to contest the 2024 election. Just as former President Donald Trump and his allies did after the 2020 election, Republicans are planning on blaming the voting rules for why they lost," Elias wrote. "They will couple it with an attack on the courts and false claims of fraud."

The lawsuit against those two amendments is based on the Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory, which the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) already rejected in the 2022 Moore v. Harper case. That theory posits that state legislatures alone have the power to govern federal elections and and that state-level judges don't have the power to rule on anything pertaining to federal elections, including redistricting maps.

Elias wrote that even though SCOTUS already rejected the ISL theory, Republicans are hoping to have the case "remain pending and unresolved by Election Day 2024," in order to have a "cynical tool to claim election fraud and illegal voting rules robbed them of a fair outcome."

"It would give them a basis to contest the outcome of the Michigan results once again in court and Congress. When they fail, it will fuel their pathological election denialism," he wrote.

The 2018 and 2022 elections were particularly consequential for Michigan — voters in 2018 elected Gretchen Whitmer and Dana Nessel (the state's first Democratic governor and attorney general, respectively, since 2011). In 2022, Michiganders reelected both Whitmer and Nessel, and also gave Michigan its first Democratic-controlled legislature in decades. Michigan proved decisive in the last two presidential elections with its 15 electoral college votes going to Donald Trump in 2016 and to Joe Biden in 2020.

hayes recs

Constellation of Anti-Voting Groups Threaten Democracy

By Marc Elias

August 18, 2022

https://www.democracydocket.com/news/a-constellation-of-anti-voting-groups-threaten-democracy/

republican leaders of the anti-voting movement recently held a “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” to discuss my voting rights litigation. The event was billed as the inaugural leadership dinner for a group called the Honest Elections Project. I was not invited to attend.

There is a constellation of well-funded, right-wing groups that use the legal and political system to make voting more difficult and free and fair elections less likely. They range from mere vote suppressors to full-on election deniers. Most oppose expanding voting rights and support strict voting laws. Many seek to gut the Voting Rights Act entirely; others want it interpreted so narrowly as to be ineffective. None of these organizations supported Congress’ efforts to enact new pro-voter legislation.

These right-wing groups work closely with the RNC and with state legislatures to advance anti-voting legislation.

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The American Constitutional Rights Union, Foundation for Government Accountability, Judicial Watch, Lawyers Democracy Fund, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections are just a few of the groups fighting against voting rights in court. America First Legal Foundation, Election Integrity Network, Heritage Foundation and True the Vote also support anti-democracy legal efforts. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council advances model anti-voting legislation for state legislatures.

We recently got a preview of how these groups will operationalize their legal efforts in court in the future. Earlier this year, a Florida federal judge struck down most of the state’s “Big Lie” voter suppression law. In doing so, the court found that Florida Republicans had intentionally discriminated against Black voters and had violated the constitutional rights of Floridians seeking to participate in the democratic process. On appeal, six national anti-voting groups filed separate “friend of the court” briefs opposing the lower court’s decision — in addition to the briefs by the state defendants and the Republican Party.

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For many years, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was legally barred from participating in election monitoring or voter suppression efforts as a consequence of the GOP’s ugly history of targeting minority voters in the 1980s. When that bar was lifted in 2017, the RNC picked up where it had left off and ran so-called “election integrity” programs with state parties.

These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support.

Now, in the post-Trump era, the RNC directly partners with voter suppression groups and efforts that two years ago would have been unthinkable. The party’s dismal court results following the 2020 election coupled with MAGA supporters’ distrust of the party establishment has left the GOP operating in the penumbra of the current stars of the election denier and voter suppression movement.

It’s not just what these groups do, but who runs them.

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On PILF’s board of directors, for example, are Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman,both of whom served as lawyers for former President Donald Trump. Mitchell participated in the infamous telephone call during which Trump demanded that the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) find 11,000 votes and declare Trump the winner. Eastman, who has been in the news recently for having a search warrant executed against him, helped craft the January 2021 insurrection plan.

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The Honest Elections Project — the host of the secret dinner — was formed in February 2020 and is connected to Federalist Society founder Leonard Leo.

The newest of these groups, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, was co-founded by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr (R) and Karl Rove, who served as former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. Casino billionaire Steve Wynn provides the organization’s financial backing as its finance chair.

This group is notably more competent and well-resourced than the legal buffoonery who led Trump’s post-election antics. Though I am no fan of Barr, he is unlikely to hire lawyers who claim Hugo Chávez rigged elections from the grave or threaten to release the mythological Kraken. With Rove on its board as well, Barr is almost certainly not going to hold press conferences in a landscaping parking lot.

Notably, the infrastructure on the right is eclipsing the organizations on the left.

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Historically, most organizations and resources dedicated to protecting the right to vote were connected to the left. Today there are still many important civil rights and voting rights organizations that bring litigation to protect the right to vote. Their work is invaluable. But most of those groups have broader portfolios that extend beyond voting rights and have insufficient resources to meet their growing needs.

What is notable about the right wing’s approach is the scope and interconnected nature of their legal efforts to undermine voting rights and free and fair elections.

Right-wing legal groups work in tandem with Republican legislatures dominated by election deniers. These organizations can help generate the most effective voter suppression policies that Republicans turn into laws. When those laws are challenged in court, the conservative legal groups then help defend them.

This brings me back to the “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” that I was not invited to attend. The right wing holds these events and funds these groups because they know that they cannot win fair elections. These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support. They know that they lost in 2020. They are embarrassed that Trump was routed in post-election litigation. Some are upset that his coup failed on Jan. 6.

They set up new groups, hold secret dinners and create new voter suppression laws hoping that we will give up. I’m not sure what gave them that impression. After Trump was defeated in 2020, his team fought dozens of times in court — and lost. We didn’t give up then, and we certainly aren’t giving up now.

NEXT UP

Conservatives Have Been Packing the Courts for Years

We deserve a forward-thinking judiciary filled with movement lawyers who want to see progress for our nation.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/16/alec-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/

an “Academy” for state lawmakers on voter suppression strategies run by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in July featured a veritable who’s who of the right-wing leaders behind this year’s disinformation campaign about voter fraud and assaults on voting rights across the country, documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) show.

While the July 26-28 session was ostensibly led by the dark money group Honest Elections Project, it was organized, hosted, and bankrolled by ALEC, despite repeated claims by its CEO, Lisa Nelson, that the group does not work on voting issues.

Nelson provided the formal welcome at the conference’s opening session, ALEC staff organized turnout, and ALEC provided two nights of accommodations at the five-star Grand America Hotel, five meals, and a $450 travel reimbursement for attendees. ALEC’s annual meeting was held at the same hotel immediately after the Academy.

An invite published by CMD in July stated that “13 legislators from across the country” would be in attendance, but the materials acquired by CMD do not include an attendance list.

Rather than email materials to ALEC lawmakers that may be subject to open records laws, ALEC distributed hard copies of the agenda at registration along with a “zip drive containing a resources document and a one-pager on your state’s election policies,” according to an email from Sarah Wall, ALEC’s manager of legislative outreach and coalitions, obtained by CMD. Wall’s email also lists Michael Bowman, president of ALEC Action, as a key contact for the event.

Nelson tipped her hand about ALEC’s voter suppression subterfuge in May at a meeting of the far-right Council for National Policy. Video of the event obtained by CMD shows Nelson speaking frankly about ALEC’s work on voting and revealing its plans to outsource model policy on the controversial topic to avert the spotlight. “We don’t have model policy. We will be developing that at the Honest Elections Project [Academy], through them,” Nelson said.

Honest Elections Project, the group ALEC chose to carry the ball on its voting agenda, is a dark money operation formed in February 2020 to push for voting restrictions and spread baseless and dangerous claims about election fraud, laying the groundwork for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. It is a project of The 85 Fund, the new legal name for the Judicial Education Project, a group linked to Leonard Leo that played a central role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges.

Speakers at the Academy featured many of the key strategists and leaders on the Right spreading misinformation around voter fraud, promoting Trump’s lies around the 2020 election, and pushing sweeping new voting restrictions.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita gave the keynote address. A proponent of Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, Rokita recently testified in front of the U.S. Senate against strengthening the federal Voting Rights Act.

Rokita was one of only four state attorneys general to not sign a National Association of Attorneys General letter condemning the Jan. 6 violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA was a member of the “March to Save America” coalition that organized the Jan. 6 rally, and its policy arm, Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robocalls urging supporters to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”

Agenda Focused on Election Legislation

Most of the Academy sessions focused on legislation, giving legislators a chance to discuss bills to restrict voting that have already been introduced and passed in their states this year and hear from Republican-aligned leaders about what more they think needs to be done.

By the time ALEC held its voter suppression Academy in July, 18 states had already passed 30 laws this year making it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Honest Elections Project’s Executive Director Jason Snead, who worked with ALEC to organize the event, laid out “priorities for election integrity across the states” and polling results in a breakfast session and appeared on another panel on how to “shore up” legislative control over election processes with Jason Torchinsky and Lee Goodman.

The Honest Elections Project has aggressively promoted a radical legal theory called the “independent state legislatures doctrine,” which holds that state courts don’t have the authority to review state election laws and would empower heavily gerrymandered state legislatures to determine election outcomes.

Republican legislators have already introduced and passed bills in 2021 “interfering with nonpartisan local election administration and consolidating power to administer and determine elections results themselves,” the Voting Rights Lab reported.

Snead is a former senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation where he developed its Election Fraud Database, which the Brennan Center for Justice says “grossly exaggerated” the extent of voter fraud.

Torchinsky is general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trust and has been defending ALEC against CMD’s state complaints alleging that ALEC illegally gave sophisticated voter management campaign software linked to the Republican National Committee to its legislative members.

Goodman is an elections attorney and a former Republican chairman and commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2013 and 2018.

Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, and Ken Blackwell, executive director of the MAGA voter suppression center at America First Policy Institute led another legislative session on “securing absentee ballots.”

Anderson bragged to Heritage donors in April that policies, “severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes” and “preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters” were among recommendations Heritage gave Georgia for its massive voter suppression bill.

Blackwell’s Center for Election Integrityrecently published a “Top 25 Common-Sense State Election Integrity Reforms” fact sheet that includes these Heritage recommendations alongside other extreme voter suppression wish-list items, such as eliminating no-excuse absentee ballots and requiring an affidavit for absentee applications.

Blackwell also moderated a panel at the Academy with state legislators “discussing election challenges they’ve faced in their own states.”

Another panel over breakfast covered “things to consider with implementation of laws” related to election day voter registration, “election observer protections,” and organizing seniors to work the polls. Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Donald Palmer, a Trump appointee, and Cleta Mitchell, chair of the Conservative Partnership Institute’s Election Integrity Network, led the session.

Mitchell is a Big Lie fueler and Trump legal advisor who lost her job at Foley & Lardner following news that she participated in a January call in which Trump asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to make him the winner of the state’s electoral votes.

“On Dec. 30, Cleta Mitchell wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud,” The Washington Post Magazine reported. Meadows is now a colleague of Mitchell’s at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Three Republican secretaries of state, Tennessee’s Tre Hargett, Kentucky’s Michael Adams, and West Virginia’s Mac Warner, spoke on a panel about “what policies the states need to employ to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

“Easier to vote and harder to cheat” has been a favored talking point of Republicans in recent years.

All three are active in the Republican Secretaries of State Committee (RSSC), with Hargett serving as chair and Adams as vice chair. Republican secretaries of state produced a report on “Best Practices for Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat” for the Republican State Leadership Committee, obtained by CMD.

The RSSC holds monthly calls that Commissioner Palmer often attends. Secretary Warner and Palmer also participated in an “off-the-record” Election University session on June 21 as part of the U.S. House GOP’s “Faith in Elections Project,” as first reported by CMD.

ALEC Lawmakers Consider Litigation

ALEC’s Academy featured two panels on litigation. The first dealt with “anticipating challenges to the Voting Rights Act in Arizona,” legal challenges mounted by Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias, and redistricting fights, and was led by with Republican lawyers Torchinsky, Michael Thielen, and Brian Barnes.

Thielen is the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association and served on the national board of Lawyers for Trump in 2020. Barnes was involved in legal challenges to changes in voting procedures in North Carolina and Pennsylvania last fall.

Goodman and Utah’s former Solicitor General Tyler Green led the second panel on “operationalizing litigation challenges.” Noted in the description of the panel are “ways to challenge the scope of litigation attacks on new election integrity legislation (defense) as well as advance the ball on election integrity (offense).”

As of Oct. 3, “at least 43 voting cases have been filed in 12 states, and Georgia and Texas lead the way with ten new lawsuits each in 2021,” the Brennan Center reports.

Training Sessions on “the Left”

Two trainings focused on “the Left” filled out the remaining agenda at the ALEC Academy. Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow and manager of the Heritage Foundation’s “Election Reform Initiative,” and Ken Cuccinelli, former Trump staffer and chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, led a session focused on “the Left’s attack on our election system” through “state-level attacks on election integrity legislation” and HR 1, the sweeping voting rights and campaign reform bill pending in Congress....Spakovsky, who was appointed by Trump to his voter fraud myth from the Right for well over a decade.president of the Scott Walter gave the keynote for a “Mapping the Left Lunch.” Walter and CRC received funding from the Bradley Foundation... ;inspired by CMD’s SourceWatch, called “Influence Watch.” The site was “constructed in partnership with Berman and Company,” run by PR spin doctor Richard Berman, and in collaboration with ALEC.

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top Dem lawyer blasts CBS News: 'Do you really need to both-sides democracy?'

Bob Brigham Raw Story

May 09, 2021

Attorney Marc Elias, who coordinates Democratic Party lawsuits to protect voting rights, blasted CBS News on Saturday.

"Senate committee to hold markup on controversial voting bill," read a headline by CBS News.

"The Senate Rules Committee will hold a markup Tuesday of the For the People Act, a massive voting and elections bill. Democrats claim the bill is necessary to counter new voting restrictions being considered by multiple states, while Republicans decry it as federal overreach," reported Grace Segers.

"Why describe it as controversial?" Elias asked.

"Seriously, @CBSNews--do you really need to 'both-sides' democracy?" he asked.

Polling on the bill is quite positive, even among Republicans.

"Back in March, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer obtained a recording of an adviser to Mitch McConnell privately bemoaning, on a call with conservative group leaders, that Democrats' big voting rights bill, the For the People Act, polled quite well," Vox's Andrew Prokop reported on Tuesday. "A new Data for Progress poll conducted as part of a partnership with Vox backs up that assessment. The poll surveyed 1,138 likely voters nationally between April 16 and April 19, and it finds that much of what the 800-page bill claims to do is overwhelmingly popular."

"More than 80 percent of respondents said they supported preventing foreign interference in elections, limiting the influence of money in politics, and modernizing election infrastructure to increase election security. More than 60 percent of respondents supported requiring nonpartisan redistricting commissions, a 15-day early voting period for all federal elections, same-day registration for all eligible voters, automatic voter registration for all eligible voters, and giving every voter the option to vote by mail," Prokop reported.

Why describe it as controversial? Seriously, @CBSNews--do you really need to "both-sides" democracy? https://t.co/EtlQwVwZOs

— Marc E. Elias (@Marc E. Elias)1620520067.0

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