by Corinne Murdock | Aug 29, 2023 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
The Biden administration and the dark left money network are demanding access to nonparty conservative organizations’ private documents in two lawsuits against election integrity laws requiring proof of citizenship and voter roll cleanups.
In the case Mi Familia Vota v. Fontes (2:22-cv-00509) the Department of Justice (DOJ), Democratic National Committee (DNC), Arizona Democratic Party, and leftist dark money groups including: Mi Familia Vota, Living United For Change Arizona (LUCHA), and Voto Latino are challenging the election integrity bills HB2243 and HB2492. In the case Mi Familia Vota v. Fontes (2:21-cv-01423), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, League of Conservation Voters, LUCHA, Mi Familia Vota, and Arizona Coalition for Change are challenging SB1485.
Any individuals or organizations that aren’t party in a lawsuit are considered “nonparty.” Federal law allows for nonparty individuals and organizations to be brought into a case and be compelled to disclose evidence requested. In these cases challenging Arizona’s three election integrity laws, that means conservative organizations are being asked to hand over private documents, communications, legislative correspondence, lobbying strategy, and information on contributions and expenditures.
Those issued nonparty subpoenas include the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) and the Republican Party of Arizona. No court has issued an injunction on the contested laws to date.
The Goldwater Institute is representing AFEC in their defense against the subpoenas. In a motion to quash the subpoenas, the organization argued that private opinions have no bearing on the validity of a challenged law, citing precedent set by Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), and that the subpoenas threaten the rights to free speech and privacy.
“The Supreme Court has stated time and again that individual legislators’ opinions about a statute reveal little or nothing about the law’s meaning and validity,” read the motion. “It is thus all the more true that the statements and opinions of private parties, several degrees removed from any official government action, have no bearing on the question of whether a state law is consistent with federal law.”
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, declared in a report that the budding leftist practice of filing nonparty subpoenas against conservative individuals and organizations constitutes a weaponization of federal law to intimidate and silence conservatives.
AFEC’s subpoena came from the Arizona Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander for Equity Coalition (AZ AANHPI for Equity). While that organization argues for total transparency of its ideological opponent, it is shrouded in mystery itself.
AANHPI for Equity and AZ AANHPI Advocates have independent websites, social media pages, and staff, yet the pair are presented as one entity in multiple locations (for example, on the AZ AANHPI for Equity “about us” page). Both were founded in July 2020 by Jennifer Chau, who has served as the director for AZ AANHPI for Equity, an unspecified nonprofit, and executive director for AZ AANHPI Advocates, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, since their inception according to her LinkedIn page.
According to the IRS, AZ AANHPI Advocates had its federal tax exempt status automatically revoked in mid-May for not filing any tax forms in the entire three years of its existence (EIN:85-2344934). The IRS issued its revocation posting earlier this month. No IRS records exist for AZ AANHPI for Equity.
Yet, both organizations’ websites continue to solicit donations and market themselves as nonprofits. The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) awarded AZ AANHPI Advocates good standing for its status as a nonprofit in mid-July as well. No ACC records exist for AZ AANHPI for Equity.
On its website, AZ AANHPI Advocates discloses that it receives funding from top leftist dark money organizations The Future We Need and Arizona Wins!. The listed address for The Future We Need is the same address for the Arizona Education Association and Progress Now Arizona (now Progress Arizona); yet, no such organization as “The Future We Need” exists per ACC, the IRS, the Federal Election Commission (FEC), or the secretary of state’s campaign finance databases. There does exist a similarly-named dark left political action committee (PAC) entity, “The Future We Want.”
In their entire three years of advocacy and fundraising, only AZ AANHPI Advocates had any campaign finance records filed within the state: just one receipt of $10,000 from Invest in Arizona in August 2021, for “signature gathering.” According to the secretary of state’s campaign finance database, AZ AANHPI has never filed any reports on their contributions or expenditures.
Invest in Arizona and Arizona Wins both had one top Democratic dark money handler in common: Dacey Montoya. (Gov. Katie Hobbs’ controversial former press secretary, Josselyn Berry, worked as the program manager for Arizona Wins from 2015 to 2016 and executive director for ProgressNow from 2016 to 2019; Hobbs’ gubernatorial campaign used the same mailing address as both organizations; and Montoya’s consulting firm was involved in both Hobbs’ secretary of state and gubernatorial campaigns). Montoya is now the treasurer for the organization behind the ballot initiative to legalize any and all abortion up to birth, Arizona for Abortion Access.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Aug 3, 2023 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Democratic leadership and Biden officials split with their go-to election lawyer, Marc Elias; a 2021 Supreme Court loss from Arizona served as a major catalyst for the breakup. In that case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court effectively gutted the federal Voting Rights Act by upholding Arizona’s restrictions on out-of-precinct voting and ballot harvesting.
Although Elias and Democratic leaders parted ways in April, it wasn’t until this past week that details of the split came to light.
According to unnamed sources who spoke with Axios, Elias went rogue in the Biden administration’s eyes: filing lawsuits without notice or consent, with Biden leaders only learning of them via social media or mainstream reporting; racking up large bills, such as the $20+ million payout from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Biden campaign for defending the 65 lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results; and public criticism of a bipartisan election bill crafted by key Biden leadership and Democrats.
Elias’ tactics also differed from the reported desires of Biden leadership. While Elias viewed all fights as worth taking up, Biden officials wanted to be more selective.
Elias was a longtime legal bulldog for the DNC. In 2016, Elias served as general counsel for the 2016 campaign of presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Following Clinton’s loss, Elias served as a principal player in the Russiagate scandal. As Clinton’s general counsel, Elias billed for his hire of the opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, that created the Steele dossier: the Russian collusion allegations against former President Donald Trump leaked to Buzzfeed ten days before Trump’s inauguration that became a shadow over Trump’s entire presidency.
In 2020, Elias’ work resulted in key reforms to election law that lent to Democratic victories and the defense of challenges to President Joe Biden’s election.
As AZ Free News reported last November, Elias’ firm launched in 2021, Elias Law Group, was a listed address for the Black Lives Matter headquarters. The firm stated in the latest BLM’s IRS filing that it maintains all of BLM’s books and records. According to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) records, the Black Lives Matter PAC paid Elias’ firm over $14,800 from January to December of last year. Per their latest FEC filing on Monday, BLM has paid Elias’ firm nearly $3,000 so far this year.
One of the other main recipients of the BLM PAC’s disbursements is Premier Political Compliance founded and led by the former compliance director Christine Neville of the Perkins Coie firm, where Elias served as partner prior to launching his own firm. Both Neville and Elias departed Perkins Coie to launch their respective firms in 2021.
Elias has increasingly positioned himself as a public figure on the topic of election law and, as evident by working with BLM, other social issues. He has appeared in numerous interviews and maintained a consistent social media presence.
Last year, however, Elias deleted all tweets prior to April 4 without explanation. Around that time, federal investigators began to close in on those behind Russiagate. About a month before Elias purged his Twitter, the FEC fined the DNC and Clinton $113,000 for misrepresenting payments for opposition research used to create Russiagate.
Biden’s former chief of staff and re-election campaign leader, Ron Klain, said that relations between Elias and Biden leaders remain amicable despite the split.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Apr 17, 2023 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
“We have more votes than Kris Mayes. It’s up to the courts to decide to count them.” – Abe Hamadeh
Recent analysis of uncounted provisional ballots in November’s attorney general race make a compelling case that Abe Hamadeh received more legal votes than Kris Mayes.
The 2022 faceoff between Hamadeh and Mayes serves as one of the closest races in Arizona’s history. It’s on par with one other historically significant race that was ultimately overturned, even after both the Maricopa County Superior Court and a Democratic Secretary of State had declared a winner: the 1916 gubernatorial election.
However, the year-long contention of that election had to do with the design of the ballots confusing voters on their vote. This time around, just over 100 years later, the issue concerned voters whose votes were denied to them due to government missteps and failures with election administration.
Last Tuesday, the Mohave County Superior Court granted Hamadeh oral arguments in his motion for a new trial challenging the outcome of his election based on hundreds of allegedly disenfranchised voters. That will occur in about a month, on May 16. Hamadeh shared that they have over 250 affidavits from allegedly disenfranchised voters at present. The vote margin difference is 280.
According to all counties’ data, there are roughly 8,000 provisional ballots outstanding. Hamadeh led on day-of voters statewide, winning an average of 70 percent of the votes. Provisional ballots may heavily favor him, due to the additional fact that day-of votes were generally 2 to 1 Republican.
“All data points suggest that it favors Republicans,” said Hamadeh.
It appears that, due to the mass tabulator failures, there were less voters but more provisional ballots cast this past election year. Rejection rates of these provisional ballots increased sharply across several counties: Santa Cruz County’s rejections increased from one out of the 117 provisional ballots cast to 83 out of the 139 provisional ballots cast. Pima County’s rejection rate doubled.
Despite Pinal County having a comparable number of provisional ballots cast in 2020 and 2022, their rejection rate increased from 59 to 63 percent.
Yavapai County more than doubled its rejection of provisional ballots this past election than in 2020 based on non-registration, despite having a significant decline in voter turnout (over 87 percent versus just over 75 percent).
Further data will be published in full as court proceedings continue. Hamadeh shared that his legal team is awaiting some data from several counties, which he said would bolster their case.
“As more data comes in, it’s getting worse for the government and looking better for us,” said Hamadeh.
Another development that could impact Hamadeh’s case is the divorce between Democrats’ top election lawyer, Marc Elias, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Elias is engaged in an ongoing federal lawsuit fighting for the voting rights of those voters whose registration was canceled. Elias is fighting for all provisional ballots to be counted — an outcome that would be favorable for Hamadeh’s case, when it was originally intended to be favorable to Democratic interests.
Hamadeh’s legal and analytics teams estimate that over 1,000 voters had their voter registration erroneously canceled due to government system issues. That’s separate from the 8,000 provisional ballots outstanding.
Hamadeh’s team also discovered 750 high-propensity voters whose registrations were wrongly canceled. Of that number, only 176 showed up on Election Day.
“It’s really a screwed up situation,” said Hamadeh. “If you can imagine, the disenfranchisement is even bigger than what we’re arguing.”
Bureaucratic mismanagement resulting in voter registration failures is nothing new, especially for Maricopa County. In 2020, thousands of voters were nearly disenfranchised by intergovernmental miscommunication.
Hamadeh dismissed the argument from some outlets that high-propensity voters should’ve taken more steps to ensure they were registered, saying that doesn’t excuse the government’s failure.
“If you’re on PEVL [Permanent Early Voting List] and you expect your ballot to come but it doesn’t, you’re disenfranchised,” said Hamadeh.
Hamadeh referenced one case he called “egregious,” where a father paying his college daughter’s vehicle registration unknowingly had his registration transferred to a different county — all because his daughter was going to college in a different county.
“Without any notice by the way, he never got any notice. And we know he never intended to go to Coconino because he doesn’t have a house there or anything,” said Hamadeh.
There was also the case of Howard, a visually-impaired disabled veteran whose voter registration was canceled through bureaucratic error, unbeknownst to him, and left him without his voting power in this last election. Hamadeh insisted that Democrats’ refusal to see Howard as the victim in this case was hypocritical.
“The media and Democrats are trying to say this is voter error. But in every single election incident, just two years ago, they were arguing against these voter registration cancellations,” said Hamadeh.
Then there’s the 269 voters who showed up on election day with their mail-in ballot and checked in — but never had their vote counted. Yet, on the county’s end, those check-ins reflect votes cast. Of those 269 who dropped off mail-in ballots that weren’t counted, 149 were Republicans, 53 were Democrats, and 67 were “other.” Hamadeh reported that many of those voters told his team that their votes weren’t counted.
With a 280 vote margin between Mayes and Hamadeh, any of these contested provisional or mail-in ballots may result in the first race overturned in nearly a century.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Mar 15, 2022 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
One of the most prominent lawyers for the Democratic Party (DNC), Marc Elias, announced last Friday that he submitted a motion to intervene in a case challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s no-excuse mail-in voting system. Elias filed on behalf of the Senate Democrats (DSCC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and the Arizona Democratic Party in the case Arizona Republican Party v. Hobbs.
Not only does Elias specialize in election litigation, he’s been involved in the elections themselves. His December 2017 testimony detailed his role in Hillary Clinton’s Russigate hoax: how he came to hire the intelligence firm Fusion-GPS for the DNC and Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, who then ordered the debunked dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and sourced by analyst Igor Danchenko, a Russian citizen who resided in Virginia. The FBI arrested Danchenko for the “Steele dossier” early last November.
Elias could be considered a fixture within the Democratic Party establishment. The Jewish New York native worked with the DNC since 1993, notably serving as general counsel for two of the last three Democratic presidential candidates’ campaigns: John Kerry in 2004, then Hillary Clinton in 2016. Elias also followed former President Barack Obama from his days in the Senate all the way to the White House, earning a distinction by 2011 relayed in a Politico profile of being Obama’s “top lawyer.” Although lawyer Bob Bauer was technically Obama’s general counsel, Elias was a critical player.
Those are just the biggest names in American politics — the entire Democratic Party reportedly relies on Elias as their “go-to lawyer.” This was confirmed by fellow establishment members of the Democratic Party, such as former Federal Election Commission (FEC) chairman, Obama advisor, and Biden campaign counsel Robert Lenhard.
“For members of the House and Senate, there is no Democratic-side campaign finance lawyer who is more important than Marc Elias. That is without a doubt,” Lenhard told Politico. “While Bob Bauer served as White House counsel, Marc led that practice group and it thrived under his tutelage.”
Elias has been on all sides of the 2020 presidential election controversy, a predictable involvement considering his decades of redistricting fights, post-election litigation, and work with Big Tech giants Facebook and Google. Elias earned Google a win to effectively manipulate its search results with preferred candidates through its pay-per-click advertisement system, AdWords. The woman behind AdWords, Sheryl Sandberg, was picked up by Facebook in 2008.
Elias founded Democracy Docket on March 5, 2020, a Democratic Party voting advocacy group formed about a week after former President Donald Trump declared the ongoing national state of emergency over COVID-19. Democracy Docket operates out of Fairfax County, Virginia. To date, the group has been involved in nearly 330 cases, 150 of which they’ve won.
Last August, Elias left his legal firm of 28 years, Perkins Coie, to form his own: Elias Law Group.
Elias pledged to sue Arizona if the state legislature approves certain election integrity laws, such as: HB2596, which never made it to committee; HB2238, which passed the House and has yet to be considered in a Senate committee; HB2237, which passed the House and will soon be considered on the Senate floor; SB1058, approved by a Senate committee last month but not yet considered on the Senate floor; HB2170, which passed the House but has yet to be considered by a Senate committee; and HB2243, which passed the House and will soon be considered on the Senate floor.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
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