The Misdirection On ‘Fraud’
The “storyline” for the committee’s June 23 televised spectacle revolved around a letter that Clark drafted and wanted other DOJ officials to sign and send to the leadership of the Georgia state legislature. Here’s a portion of Rep. Liz Cheney’s loaded remarks about this. Before reading them, it should be noted that it has already been shown that Cheney repeatedly lied about DOJ lawyer Ken Klukowski throughout the hearing:
Neither Mr. Clark nor Mr. Klukowski had any evidence of widespread election fraud, but they were quite aware of what Mr. Trump wanted the department to do. Jeff Clark met privately with President Trump and others in the White House and agreed to assist the president without telling the senior leadership of the department who oversaw him.
As you will see, this letter claims that the US Department of Justice’s investigations have ‘Identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia.’ In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie. The Department of Justice had already informed the president of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The words fraud or fraudulent were used some 50 times in Thursday’s hearing, typically in the way they’re used in the excerpt above. The Democrat-appointed members would claim that Clark was alleging election fraud and, further, that everything about the election had been fully investigated and there was no evidence of problems with the election.
There are two major problems with Cheney’s argument. First, if she had read Clark’s letter, she would have noticed that while it did discuss major identified problems with the election potentially affecting the outcome, it never once alleged fraud. Second, it is highly debatable that the problems with the election were ever competently investigated or even understood.
If you look at the actual letter Clark drafted for discussion, he referenced “various irregularities,” “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election,” and “irregularities, sworn to by a variety of witnesses.” He referenced a report arising from Georgia Senate hearings that had taken sworn testimony and affidavits from many people about the chaotic and troubling administration of the Georgia election.
The complaints included problems with ballot custody, inability to monitor vote tabulation, inadequately maintained voter lists, and the counting of ballots from ineligible voters. The testimony even included something that would become a massive concern of election integrity advocates — the private takeover of government election offices by Mark Zuckerberg-funded groups.
And Georgia really was a mess, Fulton County in particular. None of Fulton County’s respected Republican election commissioners voted to certify the election. They had numerous problems, including that the first certification vote was taken just hours after Fulton County was still finding, processing, and tabulating ballots.
During the run-off, thumb drives were accidentally left in voting machines, exacerbating their previous concerns about ballot custody and chain of command issues. The commissioners also were concerned that no chain of custody information had been provided to them, even after they asked, for the 38 drop boxes spread throughout the country. The commissioners were concerned that no meaningful efforts had taken place to verify signatures on mail-in ballots.
It is false to claim that these things were properly investigated or that, if they were, there was no evidence to support them. Many independent analysts have determined that the Zuckerberg-funded takeover of government election offices significantly affected the outcome of the election.
That was where nearly $450 million was given — with a focus on the Democrat areas of swing states — to help run Get Out The Vote efforts. In an election that came down to 43,000 votes across three states, it is not difficult to make an overwhelming case that the Zuckerberg funding alone was outcome determinative.
It would have been difficult to properly investigate that in the short time period after the election, but it’s absolutely false to say it was investigated, much less thoroughly.