Another Judge Knocks Kobach For ‘Pattern’ Of Misleading Statements

A federal judge on Tuesday denied Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s (R) request to reconsider a court-imposed sanction over his deceptive statements in a voting rights case, arguing that the Kobach has a “pattern” of misleading the court.

Kobach, who leads President Donald Trump’s sketchy “election integrity” commission, was sanctioned in late June by U.S. Magistrate James P. O’Hara for “deceptive conduct and lack of candor.” The sanction stemmed from a case brought against Kobach by the ACLU over the secretary of state’s push for proof-of-citizenship voter registration in Kansas. As part of its lawsuit, the ACLU sought to view two documents Kobach drew up about proposed amendments to the National Voter Registration Act, one of which the secretary of state was seen holding while meeting with Trump in December.

O’Hara ruled at the time that the arguments Kobach’s attorneys employed to keep the ACLU from seeing those documents included “patently misleading representations” of the documents.

In her Tuesday decision rejecting Kobach’s request to reconsider the sanction, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson agreed that Kobach’s descriptions of the documents were misleading. She noted and swiftly dismissed Kobach’s new argument that his muddied descriptions were merely the result of “last-minute editing mistakes.”

“Defendant did not mention editing, page-limitations, or issues with deadlines in his thirty-three page response brief to the motion for sanctions, so his assertion that this is an ‘expanded explanation’ is not well taken,” she wrote.

Robinson added in a footnote that Kobach’s statements about the two documents sought by the ACLU were not the only statements “that have called his credibility into question.” She listed examples that she said demonstrated the Kansas secretary of state had a “pattern” of misleading the court.

“While these examples do not form the basis for any sanctions award imposed by Judge O’Hara, they do demonstrate a pattern, which gives further credence to Judge O’Hara’s conclusion that a sanctions award is necessary to deter defense counsel in this case from misleading the court about the facts and record in the future,” Robinson wrote.