Thread by @EricLiptonNYT

THREAD:Let's walk through secretive drive late last year by a small group of religious activists who teamed up with Trump & Republican state AGs to try to overturn presidential election. Start off with Mike Farris, from the anti-gay rights/anti abortion Alliance Defending Freedom

Farris in the above email is sending a draft of the complaint that Texas AG Ken Paxton would about a week later file with the United States Supreme Court. For now, Farris is pitching South Carolina AG Alan Wilson. Will take just about any GOP AG. So he leaves state name blank

SC AG Wilson talks to Farris abt proposed lawsuit. "We have been having constant conversations with other state AGs and state AG staffs" But Wilson has issues with it, which he details in an email to another conservative activist, the author Don Brown. So Farris has to move on.

Another key player in the "State v State project," as they call it, is "CJ Martin"/Mark D. Martin, former chief justice of N.C. Supreme Court, now Dean of Regent University Law, the religious school where students live out their "Christian worldview with intentionality."

These religious conservatives want South Carolina AG Wilson to take the lead--Texas AG Paxton is facing a criminal investigation himself. But Wilson has reservations. While "Texas is warming up to maybe jumping on board."

Paxton moves ahead and files the lawsuit, expanding on the arguments sketched out in the brief Mike Farris had been shopping around. Compare the opening lines. First is Farris draft. Second is actual filing by AG Paxton of Texas with US Supreme Court. See anything similar?

Here is the funny thing. Mike Farris in 2016 urged his followers to vote against Trump.

But that was before Trump moved to fill the Supreme Court with nominees that Mike Farris approved of. In fact, Farris was at the White House when Trump nominated Amy Comey Barrett

Controlling the Supreme Court---that seems to be a key to many of these folks--and a part of what so motivated them to help Trump get a second term. Farris makes this clear in his many social media postings, as he turns to the court to combat LGBT rights and abortion.

So that is a bit of background on origins of that odd lawsuit Texas AG Paxton filed in Dec 2020 to try to overturn the election of President Joe Biden. The Supreme Court, of course, rejected the move. (Farris was "deeply disappointed") But this is still part of that history.

Thanks again to @WesternJon and his politics students at Mount Holyoke and to @bymarkwalker. Together we did FOIAs around the United States of Republican AGs to get visibility into this maneuver.

READ THE STORY: One of nation’s most prominent Christian conservative lawyers played a critical behind-the-scenes role in the lawsuit the Texas AG filed in December in an effort to overturn the election of President Biden, documents obtained via FOIA show nytimes.com/2021/10/07/us/…

Also, FYI, the story has links to many other documents we got via FOIA detailing this effort to subvert democracy.