Interim D.C. U.S. Lawyer Ed Martin goes to research voter fraud, and given the monster that Martin is, he’s most likely going to seek out some regardless of its nonexistence. He has spun up what he’s pompously calling “Special Unit: Election Accountability” as if he’s helming a “Law & Order” spinoff.
Martin is rising as one of many dumbest villains within the villain-stuffed Trump administration. Partially, that’s as a result of he’s exceptionally unqualified to be a U.S. legal professional, having no expertise by any means that might warrant making him the highest prosecutor for the nation’s capital.
Martin’s previous work is restricted to writing pro-Trump rubbish with conservative anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly and unsuccessfully operating for elected workplace in Missouri. What Martin does have expertise in, nevertheless, is being a true-blue election denier who was current on Jan. 6 after which grew to become the protection legal professional for a number of insurrectionists.
Since taking workplace, he has helped a GOP congressman keep away from home violence fees, threatened an elected Democrat who known as Elon Musk a “dick,” and, in his position as prosecutor, dismissed felony fees for a J6 rioter he nonetheless represented as protection counsel. Sadly, that’s what counts for related experience on this administration.
Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach
If Martin’s plan to research elections sounds acquainted, it’s as a result of throughout his first administration, Trump created the Presidential Advisory Fee on Election Integrity. He stuffed it to the gills with voter suppression lovers like then-Vice President Mike Pence and then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
Kobach has spent his profession making an attempt to make it more durable for individuals to vote, and he was primed to seek out rampant fraud throughout the 2016 election. The fee lasted solely seven months earlier than Trump shuttered it, maybe as a result of it didn’t discover any proof of the widespread voter fraud Trump was determined to seek out.
In comparison with Martin, although, Kobach is a mere newbie. Martin solely has his present job due to his devotion to “the big lie” and his involvement within the “Stop the Steal” motion. He’ll be pushed to unearth voter fraud despite the fact that examine after examine after examine has discovered it to be vanishingly uncommon. An Related Press evaluation of six swing states from the 2020 election discovered 475 potential voter fraud instances out of greater than 25 million ballots solid.
When he introduced the election accountability unit, Martin additionally stated he had already opened one investigation. After all, neither he nor anybody else within the administration will say what that investigation is, with Martin as a substitute musing about that point 20 years in the past when he discovered some unspecified voter fraud in Missouri.
It isn’t even clear whether or not Martin, as a U.S. legal professional for D.C. solely, would have the authority to conduct a nationwide investigation into voter fraud. Even when the earlier Voter Fraud Fee was created by the president, at the least 44 states refused to supply a lot of the voter information demanded, largely as a result of the fee demanded confidential information.
After all, the failure of the unique Voter Fraud Fee occurred earlier than Trump’s 2020 loss and the widespread GOP acceptance of “the big lie.” Numerous Republican-led states might have discovered Trump’s 2017 demand to traipse by means of their voter information an overreach. However now that election denial is the default place of many election officers and Republican candidates, conservatives will probably be way more inclined to help in Martin’s mission.
U.S. Federal Election Fee Commissioner Ellen Weintraub Ed
Whereas Martin is pretending that nonexistent voter fraud is threatening the integrity of U.S. elections, Trump is busy dismantling the elements of the federal government that truly shield elections. Trump has tried to take away Federal Elections Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a longtime champion of precise election integrity efforts corresponding to combatting the corrosive results of darkish cash on elections.
Trump additionally kneecapped the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, which assisted and educated state election officers on all the pieces from cyberattacks to the protection of their staff. In February, the administration put 17 CISA staff on administrative depart, together with individuals employed to fight overseas affect in elections. Trump additionally slashed funding, so there’ll not be funding for assessing or responding to cyberthreats or working with state authorities officers.
As a substitute of serving to to protect elections in opposition to digital assaults and manipulation by overseas actors, Trump goes to have Musk deal with all the pieces. By some means voting will occur with out computer systems as a result of Elon informed him that “computers are not meant for voting, it’s just not good, it’s too many transactions taking place, too quickly.”
The administration has comprehensively rejected any duty to maintain U.S. elections secure from precise hazards. The 2024 election noticed a large variety of tried cyberattacks on election web sites. China, Iran, and Russia all tried to intrude within the 2024 election.
Now the nation is weak to these very actual threats whereas Martin pushes the very not actual risk of voter fraud. In the meantime, hackers and overseas actors are going to have a area day.
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