By Joe Miller
This Week: MAGA Election Deniers Face Accountability For Efforts To Overturn Election Results
Over the past week, insurrectionists have begun to face accountability for their violent attempts to suppress the will of voters across the country. In Georgia, a federal judge has denied Senator Lindsey Graham’s efforts to refuse his Fulton grand jury subpoena. Last week, the Fulton grand jury approved a subpoena for documents and communications between cybersecurity firm SullivanStrickler and Trump attorney Sydney Powell, who orchestrated a voting systems breach in rural Coffee County after the 2020 election. New video footage from the Coffee County election office revealed additional visits to the elections office by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan (who ‘audited’ voting machines in Arizona), Jeff Lenberg (who also investigated voting machines in Michigan and New Mexico), and Georgia false elector Cathy Latham.
In Arizona, the State Bar is investigating multiple attorneys involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, with one inquiry requesting the emails of a Phoenix lawyer who helped assemble an unconstitutional ‘alternate’ Trump elector slate, and another requesting previously undisclosed communications with Trump lawyer Christina Bobb. Arizona false electors made numerous headlines over the past week, as false elector ‘head delegate’ Kelli Ward told a court that thousands will be implicated if she complies with her subpoena from the January 6th committee, while Blake Masters hired two false electors as staffers.
In neighboring New Mexico, a judge removed Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin from office for his involvement in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, disqualifying him as an insurrectionist under the 14th Amendment – a first since 1869. Griffin held significant ties to far-right militias in the state, and refused to certify the results of a primary election held in June.
Elsewhere, in ongoing anti-democratic efforts to subvert free and fair elections:
Pennsylvania state Senator Doug Mastriano is suing the January 6 Committee, seeking to block investigators from enforcing a subpoena for testimony over his role in bussing rioters to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
A Michigan county clerk who provided Trump-aligned cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas with a vote tabulator after the 2020 election is now one of the plaintiffs in a new lawsuit seeking to decertify the state’s election results.
In Georgia, a group of MAGA organizers (branded as ‘VoterGA’) are challenging the eligibility of tens of thousands of Georgia voters ahead of the midterm elections, in a mass-voter suppression effort backed by Trump allies Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne.
In Minnesota, Crow Wing County election officials enacted a set of conspiratorial new powers demanded by a group of ‘persistent’ MAGA extremists, moving to hand-count election precincts and produce unnecessary ‘cast vote records’ in November.
And finally, the Michigan state board of canvassers deadlocked on two ballot initiatives along party lines last week, sending the matter to the state Supreme Court for a final decision on the two proposals that would expand ballot access and enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution, respectively.
