Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!
The FBI is ramping up its probe into the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia — part of the Trump administration’s continuing effort to sow seeds of distrust in the state’s election system and magically materialize evidence of election fraud to support President Trump’s 2020 delusions about the election results there.
In January, the FBI executed a search warrant at an election hub in Fulton County (which is home to Atlanta and also ground zero for Trump and his allies’ election conspiracy theories in 2020), seizing voting equipment and ballots, and other records related to the 2020 election. According to the warrant, investigators were looking for “all physical ballots from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County; including, but not limited to: absentee ballots to include envelopes; advanced voting ballots; provisional ballots; in-person election day ballots; emergency ballots; damaged or destroyed ballots; duplicated ballots; or any other ballot that was used to cast a vote.”
In April, the DOJ got a grand jury subpoena demanding the personal information of thousands of Fulton County election workers. On Tuesday, though, a federal judge decisively shut down this effort, ruling that the “subpoena is unreasonable and must be quashed.”
The latest is that, per an internal FBI memo, the FBI helmed by Director Kash Patel has found a new way to step up its seemingly bogus investigation.
Last week, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the probe, the FBI ordered 260 analysts to assist in what is now reportedly being called a “priority” investigation related to the 2020 election in Fulton County, according to an internal memo obtained by MS NOW.
“In support of the Director’s Office priority effort, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) and Criminal Division are requesting all FBI field offices to immediately surge support to an FBI Atlanta priority investigation,” the memo said.
The memo, which does not give details on the investigations, notes that each staffer is to conduct a total of 708 “record checks” by July 17.
“Looking for derogatory information is the short answer. The idea is to build a case. Look at associations between people, look into their social media, their business activity, travel, contact with other investigative subjects,” an anonymous official told MS NOW, in response to a question about what exactly these staffers are supposed to be looking for in these documents.
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who in the aftermath of 2020 refused to succumb to pressure from Trump to “find” votes for Trump that would overturn the election results in Georgia — said in a statement that his office is “ready to assist law enforcement in any investigation that will reassure Georgians that their votes are cast securely and counted accurately.”
Election Officials Shrug Off DOJ’s Threat of Criminal Prosecution Over Non-Citizen Voting Myth
The DOJ is now threatening election officials in all 50 states with criminal prosecution if non-citizens are found on voter rolls. Once again, this is one of many many ways the Trump administration is trying to exert control over election administration while perpetuating the myth of non-citizen voting.
As TPM has reported, noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare and simply not an issue that happens often enough to impact election results. The fact that there is no evidence to support conspiracy theories about non-citizens voting illegally and en masse for Democrats has, of course, not stopped the Trump administration from fear mongering about it.
The DOJ has reportedly sent letters to election officials in all 50 states, the DOJ confirmed to ProPublica this week.
In a July 7 letter obtained by Votebeat addressed to Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote that “federal law mandates that state and local election officials properly maintain election records and undertake certain actions to ensure that only eligible U.S. citizens cast votes in elections for federal office.”
“In addition to the Civil Rights Division’s authority to seek injunctive relief for violations of these laws, we are also authorized to prosecute criminal violations,” Dhillon said.
“In conclusion, any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state, who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state’s SVRL or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability,” she added.
In a statement to TPM, chief communications officer for Benson’s office, Angela Benander, said: “Michigan has one of the most effective voter list maintenance processes in the nation, going above and beyond the NVRA standard.”
“We’ve also been clear that we have (to) do this work carefully, in accordance with state and federal law, to ensure no voter is incorrectly disenfranchised,” she added. “While all this information is either in the DOJ’s possession or easy reach, we will be happy to provide it again to help address any confusion.”
Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes also confirmed this week that he received a similar letter from Dhillon.
“The suggestion that Arizona election officials are failing to do their jobs is simply not supported by the facts—county recorders and Secretaries of State’s Office work every day to maintain accurate voter rolls and remove ineligible registrations through established legal process,” he wrote.
And Deidre Henderson, the Republican lieutenant governor of Utah, described the DOJ letter in a post on Threads as a “love letter” that is “sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution.”
“I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts,” she added. “This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”
DOJ Keeps Trying to Save Its Flailing Voter Data Campaign
In an increasingly desperate move to save its failing effort to seize sensitive voter data from states, the Justice Department is appealing its three most recent court losses, in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
In all three of these cases, federal judges noted in their rulings that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA), which the DOJ has relied on to argue for why it’s entitled to state’s voter rolls, does not give the administration the authority to demand personal identifying voter information.
As you’ll recall from last week’s edition of The Franchise, the DOJ has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C. in an unprecedented attempt to force states to hand over unredacted voter data that, as many federal judges have now affirmed, the Trump administration is simply not entitled to.
So far, the DOJ has faced 11 loses in courts and zero wins. And, yet, the DOJ soldiers on.
This week, it appealed the Maryland ruling to the 4th Circuit. And also this week it appealed its Pennsylvania loss to the 3rd Circuit and its New Hampshire loss to the First Circuit.
Again, it’s baffling that the DOJ has not just dropped this entire campaign by now.
Justin Levitt, professor of law at Loyola Marymount University, posited that they might be appealing to simply look like they are “doing something” for Trump.
“This entire enterprise has had, from the start, a bit of a ‘look busy so the boss thinks you’re working’ vibe,” Levitt told me. “And it wouldn’t shock me if that’s still the primary operating principle.”
Jared Polis Fires Officials Who Opposed Clemency for Election Denier Tina Peters
Last week, Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis fired two members of the 11-member clemency advisory board, who spoke out about Polis’ decision to commute the sentence of election denier and former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters.
Polis fired board members Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, last Wednesday according to The New York Times, which reported that Proff and Taslimi made it public that the board had voted unanimously against Polis’ decision to grant clemency to Peters. Polis, however, overruled the board’s vote both times.
In a letter from Polis to Proff and Taslimi obtained by the Times, Polis wrote that they had “breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes.”
“He’s saying the public doesn’t have the right to know his own advisory board told him no — twice,” Taslimi told the Times, in response to Polis’s letter. “He’s not protecting a process. He’s protecting himself from scrutiny.”
“We spoke up about this because it shows the process punishes people without power, and protects the people with it,” he added.
Succumbing to pressure from Trump, Polis commuted Peters’s nine-year prison sentence in May of this year.
Just to refresh your memory, Peters went rogue and was convicted for breaching her office’s voting equipment in some conspiracy-fueled quest to find evidence of 2020 voter fraud. Peters became eligible for parole on June 1.
“She committed a crime. It did not interfere with any election, did not have to do with ballot counting, but it was illegal access to the computer room,” Polis told Colorado Public Radio in May, after announcing his decision to commute her sentence. “She thought she was trying to back up the software before it was updated. She did it illegally. There’s no question about it. And she deserves to go to prison. And I think this is a more appropriate, even harsh, frankly, sentence for that crime.”
In Other Election News:
TPM: Johnson Has a Not So New Plan For Passing GOP’s Voter Suppression Bill
TPM: READ: Detroit Responds to DOJ Sending Election Monitors to Three Blue Michigan Cities
Washington Post: Supreme Court’s dramatic moves will reshape elections — and give the GOP a midterm boost
