True the Vote finally gets cornered
Texas vote suppression and bullshit artist organization True the Vote is in trouble down in Georgia. These guys have been around for quite a while (I wrote about them for years — here’s one from 2012) but they went mainstream when Trump and his “rigged” mantra came along. They teamed up with the convicted felon and propagandist Dinesh D’Souza for the movie “2,000 Mules” which Trump claims proves his 2020 fraud accusations.
Anyway, it appears they messed with the wrong people. JV Last at the Bulwark has the story:
There’s another 2020 election case percolating in Fulton County: The Georgia State Election Board is suing True the Vote—the group whose “data” makes up the lion’s share of Dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules nonsense.
It’s a pretty wild example of FAFO.
The short version: True the Vote is a Texas-based group, which filed a complaint with Georgia’s State Election Board alleging fraud in the 2020 presidential campaign.
The Georgia State Election Board (we’ll just call it the SEB from here on out) investigated this complaint and found no fraud. So it asked True the Vote to share its evidence.
True the Vote’s response was:
The long version of the story is even crazier.
So it’s November 30, 2021, the heady days of #StopTheSteal, a time when anything—even the restoration of Trump to the White House—seemed possible.
That’s when True the Vote submitted its election fraud complaints to SEB as part of the lead-up to the creation of D’Souza’s 2000 Mules cash bonanza.
The complaint was wild stuff. Not just “Hey, maybe shady things happened here?” We’re talking tin-foil hat, “We have the alien autopsy tapes, dammit!”
Here are some selections from the True the Vote complaint:
-“Following a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta, True the Vote obtained [data] . . . which revealed concerning patterns of behavior consistent with reports made to our organization.”
-“True the Vote’s contracted team of researchers and investigators spoke with several individuals regarding personal knowledge, methods, and organizations involved in ballot trafficking in Georgia.”
-“John Doe described a network of non-governmental organizations . . . that worked together to facilitate a ballot trafficking scheme in Georgia.”
-“Curiously, a change in behavior seemed to occur on or around December 23, 2020, the day after Arizona authorities announced that fingerprints on absentee ballot envelopes helped uncover an illegal ballot harvesting scheme in that state. After that announcement, individuals depositing ballots into drop boxes in Georgia are seen wearing blue surgical gloves. They often put them on just before picking up their stacks of ballots and remove them as they exist the drop box area.”
Explosive stuff! Yet when SEB began investigating the complaint, it could find no supporting evidence. On April 21, 2022—just a few weeks before 2000 Mules debuted—SEB sent True the Vote a subpoena requesting some of the documentation the group claimed to have.
For example:
-What evidence was in the group’s “detailed account” of all that ballot harvesting?
-Who were the group’s “researchers and investigators” and how could they be contacted?
-Who were the witnesses? How could SEB interview them? Did True the Vote have sworn statements from them? Recordings of their interviews? Copies of documents they provided?
-Where was John Doe? Were there transcripts of his testimony?
Pretty standard-issue stuff. If you file a complaint making the sort of assertions and allegations True the Vote did, you kind of have to expect the presiding agency to come back and ask for your documentation when it does its investigation.
Instead, True the Vote asked SEB to stop investigating.
No, really. On May 5, True the Vote said—through the group’s lawyer, obviously—that instead of providing the evidence it claimed it had, it would prefer to withdraw its complaint.
The stated reason for True the Vote’s attempt to withdraw its complaint was that the group could not reveal any information about the many people it had spoken with because the group had “pledged confidentiality” to them and these people had “come forward at risk to their personal safety and security.”
SEB’s response is priceless:
Your main objection is that your client’s “pledged confidentiality” regarding certain information sought in the subpoena. You do not specify a basis for this objection, and do not state that it is based on some legally cognizable principle or privilege. Your letter also refers to a general “risk to [your clients’] personal safety and security to varying degrees” . . . but do not provide information or context to explain this basis . . .
Without more, I do not believe there is grounds for a protective order.
You see what’s going on, yes? You have a a bunch of bullshit artists on the make for fun and profit running into a phalanx of lawyers who aren’t willing to let them simply walk away from their BS as though nothing had happened.
[…]
More than a year later, True the Vote still hasn’t complied with SEB’s subpoena, which is what led to the lawsuit. From the complaint:
After multiple good faith efforts by the SEB and its counsel to obtain the requested information and documents, True the Vote continues to indifferently vacillate between statements of assured compliance and blanket refusals, leaving the SEB with no recourse but to report, per the foregoing statute, such conduct to this Court and seek an immediate remedy.
The entire True the Vote business reminds me of my favorite part of the latest Trump indictment. It’s the moment on page 26 when Trump lawyer Ray Stallings Smith testifies before the Georgia State Senate on December 3, 2020 and starts saying . . . all sorts of crazy stuff. Here’s the indictment’s summation of Smith’s testimony:
- That 2,506 felons voted illegally in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
- That 66,248 underage people illegally registered to vote before their seventeenth birthday prior to the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
- That at least 2,423 people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia who were not listed as registered to vote;
- That 1,043 people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia who had illegally registered to vote using a post office box;
- That 10,315 or more dead people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
- That Fulton County election workers at State Farm Arena ordered poll watchers and members of the media to leave the tabulation area on the night of November 3, 2020, and continued to operate after ordering everyone to leave.
Ray Stallings Smith wasn’t on local radio or shooting the breeze with Hannity. He was testifying before one house of the Georgia legislature. And he’s a lawyer. And he just . . . made all of this stuff up.
It’s like these #StopTheSteal people thought they were in a legal Rumspringa, where formal complaints could be filed and testimony could be given and there would be no consequences.
Or maybe the better analogy is that they deluded themselves into believing that the real world functions with the same level of accountability as Twitter.
You’re testifying before a committee? Shitpost away, bro.
You’re submitting a formal complaint? Tell them your sister’s uncle’s boyfriend’s mom said she saw a guy with blue hands stuffing the ballot box next to the 31 Flavors. You can delete the post if you get too much blowback and you’ll get so many new followers by trolling the cucks at the State Election Board. Those squares have to play by the old rules. Suckers!
The right has been claiming voter fraud for decades. Groups like this institutionalized it. Trump the narcissist who can’t ever admit he lost anything was their perfect messenger. The Big Lie was the natural consequence. Now we’ll see if there might be another consequence to this craven, dishonest, strategy.