“In 2007, the Justice Department was upended by scandal because it had pursued a partisan [anti-voting] agenda on voting, under the guise of rooting out suspected ‘voter fraud.’” 1/ brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
“In pursuing this agenda, DOJ political leadership fired seven well-respected U.S. Attorneys, dismissing some top Republican prosecutors because they had refused to prosecute nonexistent voter fraud.” 2/
“Top officials hired career staff members using a political loyalty test, perverted the work of the nonpartisan Voting Section toward partisan ends, and exerted pressure on states and an independent government agency to fall in line with an anti-voting rights agenda.” 3/
“Ultimately, the effort backfired badly. The U.S. Attorney firings touched off a wave of investigations that exposed just how partisan the Justice Department had become and how far it had strayed from its mission of neutral law enforcement.” 4/
“The result was the worst scandal to hit the Department since Watergate. The Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, was forced to resign, as were other top DOJ officials. It also helped drive Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief White House strategist, from his job.” 5/
“Moreover, the Justice Department not only lost credibility with Congress, but it also lost in the courts, where judges repeatedly rejected the untenable anti-voter legal theories it had urged.” 6/
“At least three of the seven were terminated in large part because they declined to bring voter fraud cases that lacked sufficient evidence for indictment, but that the White House saw as politically advantageous.” 7/
The Justice Department also targeted another U.S. Attorney for possible termination because of his efforts to “protect Native Americans from voting discrimination (rooted in unsubstantiated claims of fraud by voters on reservations).” 8/
10/ In 2006, despite having a received a positive recent performance evaluation, US Attorney John McKay was asked to resign.
“There was no evidence [to merit prosecution 4 voter fraud], & I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury,” he later told the media.
“There was no evidence [to merit prosecution 4 voter fraud], & I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury,” he later told the media.
11/ “McKay believes it was what he didn't do that got him fired.
A Dem candidate won Washington state's 04 gubernatorial race by just a couple of hundred votes. McKay didn't call a grand jury 2 investigate questions of voter fraud, & he heard about it when he sought a promotion.”
A Dem candidate won Washington state's 04 gubernatorial race by just a couple of hundred votes. McKay didn't call a grand jury 2 investigate questions of voter fraud, & he heard about it when he sought a promotion.”
12/ “There was no extensive voting fraud in 2002, either, when President George W. Bush’s attorney general, John Ashcroft, made finding it a top priority for the DOJ. And the federal prosecutors kept coming up empty.”brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…
13/ “After years of trying, they had charged more people with violating migratory bird laws than voting statutes.”
14/ “David Iglesias, a conservative Republican, was the United States attorney in New Mexico. Local Republicans became angry that he refused to bring corruption cases against Democrats. Shortly after the 2006 election he was dismissed.”
15/ “‘Iglesias summed up his experience: ‘First wld come the spurious allegations of voter fraud, then unvarnished legal manipulations to sway elections, followed by a rigorous insistence on unquestioned & absolute obedience &, finally, a phone call from out of the blue.’”
16/ “In Missouri, the United States attorney clashed with superiors when he refused to sign off on a lawsuit demanding a purge of state voter lists. After firing the prosecutor, Justice Department officials slipped a political aide into the position.”
17/ Recall that George W “won” the 2000 election by just 537 votes thanks, in part, to a bogus voter purge. It is undisputed that the list illegally purged 12k voters in Florida. The GOP claimed it was a “mistake.”
https://twitter.com/AriBerman/status/1060716850231816204
18/ More from former US Attorney John McKay: “The local FBI and my own prosecution team unanimously determined no evidence of voter fraud existed. (Republican politicians’ interest in bogus voter fraud didn’t begin with Trump.)”
19/ They even made an opera about the investigation into the Bush administration’s US attorney firing scandal.
20/ It gets worse. In 07, when Congress asked the Bush admin for emails surrounding the firing of 8 U.S. attorneys, Alberto Gonzales “revealed that many of the emails requested could not be produced bc they were sent on a non-government email server.” pbs.org/weta/washingto…
21/ “The officials had used the private domain gwb43.com, a server run by the RNC. Two years later, it was revealed that potentially 22 million emails were deleted, which was considered by some to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.”
22/ The deleted emails were hosted by a small company called Smartech in TN. newsweek.com/trump-emails-r…
23/ The Obama administration later found some of the deleted emails, but produced only a handful of them to @CREWcrew. (Obama wanted to look forward, not backward.) snopes.com/fact-check/g-w…
24/ Smartech was also the company that secretly received Ohio’s election night totals in 2004, where Bush defied the exit polls to win re-election. mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-…
25/ In 2015, Russia hacked Smartech.
https://twitter.com/soychicka/status/1125778120890564609
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