The Department of Justice has issued subpoenas for a grand jury investigation into the alleged absentee ballot fraud that tainted the congressional race in North Carolina’s 9th District.
According to local channel WBTV, at least three subpoenas have been issued. One went to the North Carolina Board of Elections, which has been conducting its own investigation. Another went to McCrae Dowless, the campaign operative who worked for Republican Mark Harris and headed the voter fraud scheme.
Dowless has already been arrested on seven state charges related to the fraud in the 2018 election, as well as a Republican primary in 2016. Four of Dowless’ employees have also been arrested.
The federal grand jury will reportedly meet from April 16 to April 18.
The Board of Elections has already tossed the tainted congressional race — and two other smaller races in Bladen County — and set a new election for September 10. Harris has bowed out of the race, citing his poor health. Democrat Dan McCready is running again, and former Mecklenburg County commissioner Matthew Ridenhour has jumped in on the Republican side.
The board put out a statement in response to the subpoena Monday:
Read the subpoena to the board of elections here:
Grand Jury Subpoena by on Scribd
I’d be good with Dowless getting a slap on the wrist if he could implicate much bigger fish. Sadly this one likely just represents local shenanigans.
So the DOJ will somehow blame Hillary and email server best practices? This is such an obvious case of GOP rat-f**king that the only possible purpose the DOJ can have is to muck things up and somehow get the Republican appointed.
I think that the most we can expect out of this is for Dowless to flip and implicate Harris.
Note that this is coming from DoJ Election Integrity Section in DC, not the U.S. Attorney in the EDNC. Most people here know this, but the EDNC U.S. Attorney is a hard right partisan who’s been one of the only AUSA’s willing to play the “Illegal Alienz iz Votin’!” in-person voter fraud is a thing game. He’s been in a lengthy wrangle with the state over a demand for a vast amount of Board of Elections voting data. His failure to address this actual vote fraud has been conspicuous.
Fairness compels to say whether DC stepped in because of his inaction or his inaction is due to DC saying “we got this,” or, indeed, whether he called them in in the first place, is unknown, and any of these could be the case.
This is one of those cases where investigating the investigators is a solid idea.