Author: Rachel Alexander

GOP State Senator May Be Holding Up Arizona Legislature from Sending Election Integrity Measure to Ballot

Rachel Alexander
Ken Bennett

The Arizona Legislature is considering sending an election integrity measure to the ballot this fall.

HCR 2056 was debated in the Senate Elections Committee last week. The bill would require voters to show photo ID when dropping ballots off. All early ballots dropped off will be tabulated at the voting location where they were submitted. Seven counties already do that. The bill also prohibits election officials from accepting funds from foreign entities to help administer an election.

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U.S. Supreme Court Allows State Officials to Ban January 6 Protesters from Holding State and Local Offices for ‘Insurrection’

Rachel Alexander
Couy Griffin

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a former New Mexico county commissioner who was removed from office by a state court for his role in the January 6 protest. This left in place a lower court’s decision to remove and bar Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump, from office for “aid[ing] the insurrection even though he did not personally engage in violence.” Griffin was convicted of a misdemeanor for trespassing on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. Griffin never entered the Capitol building.

His attorney Peter Ticktin stated in court filings submitting to the Supreme Court, “If the decision … is to stand, at least in New Mexico, it is now the crime of insurrection to gather people to pray together for the United States of America on the unmarked restricted grounds of the Capitol building.” He argued that Griffin was “fundamentally exercising his Constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.”

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Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman Arrested in Phoenix over His 2020 Election Legal Work

Rachel Alexander
John Eastman

Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman was arrested, booked, and arraigned Friday in Phoenix over his role in the 2020 election. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes brought charges and secured indictments in April against him, Arizona’s alternate Republican slate of electors, and a few others including Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator.

Mayes is accused by her Republican opponent for attorney general, Abe Hamadeh, of illegally holding office due to the election malfeasance in 2022. Hamadeh is still challenging his loss to her by 280 votes in the 2022 election, and has filed multiple lawsuits seeking to overturn the election, alleging among other things that 9,000 provisional ballots were never counted.

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Election Chaos Threatens Maricopa County Recorder’s Reelection Prospects

Rachel Alexander
Stephen Richer

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer faces reelection, going up against two primary opponents and a Democratic challenger. Conservatives are furious at his denials that there was significant wrongdoing in the 2020 and 2022 elections, but he may lose reelection based on merely long lines and voting complications, which frustrated voters.

Voters encountered problems casting their ballots at 70 of the 223 vote centers in Maricopa County on Election Day in 2022, resulting in long lines and concerns that ballots were not tabulated or misread.

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Democrat Appointed Judge Throws Out Abe Hamadeh’s Petition for Writ of Quo Warranto to Remove AZ AG Mayes from Office, Suggests Sanctions

Rachel Alexander
Abe Hamadeh

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Susanna Pineda, who was appointed to the bench by Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano, granted a Motion to Dismiss filed by Maricopa County officials in response to Abe Hamadeh’s Petition for Writ of Quo Warranto. She also suggested she would award sanctions against Hamadeh, other plaintiffs, and their attorney. Hamadeh had asked to remove Attorney General Kris Mayes from office and fix the 2022 election problems, including up to redoing it.

Ryan Heath, Hamadeh’s attorney, told The Arizona Sun Times, “I worked in judicial chambers as an intern in law school. Before this ruling, I’d never seen a case where a judge blatantly ignores arguments and allegations in order to impose sanctions. The appeal is already drafted, and I’m looking forward to overturning the trial court’s ruling on appeal.”

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Increasing Number of Illegal Immigrants Expected to Vote for Democrats in the 2024 Election

Rachel Alexander
Illegal migrants in small boat

Illegal immigrants may legally vote in U.S. elections, thanks to a loophole in federal law that provides an escape from any penalties and have their votes counted if they believe they are legally eligible to participate in an election.

Analysis by The Washington Times found that illegal immigrants are three times more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, and due to increasing numbers coming illegally across the border under the Biden administration, are expected to increase their votes for Democrats this fall.

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Maricopa County Republican Leadership Unanimously Censures Arizona Supreme Court for ‘Injustice’ and ‘Bias’ in Handling Election-Related Lawsuits

Rachel Alexander

The Maricopa County Republican Committee’s Executive Guidance Committee unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday censuring the Arizona Supreme Court (ASC) for its handling of election lawsuits. The censure came after the state’s highest court issued two relatively favorable rulings for Republicans: reversing sanctions against the Arizona Republican Party for an election-related case and upholding Arizona’s old 1864 law restricting abortion.

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Florida Bar Judge Recommends 60-Day Suspension for Conservative Attorney Exercising His Free Speech During Political Campaign

Rachel Alexander
Chris Crowley

A referee judge for the Florida State Bar recommended suspending decorated Gulf War veteran Chris Crowley’s law license for 60 days over his criticism of an opponent he ran against for the Office of the State Attorney in Florida’s 20th Judicial Circuit.

During the 2018 race, Crowley referred to Amira D. Fox, who eventually won, as “corrupt” and “swampy” and observed that she had “close family ties to the PLO terrorist organization.” The Florida Bar had requested a 91-day suspension for allegedly violating the bar’s ethics rule prohibiting criticism of judges, election officials, and candidates running for office.

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Navajo County Officials Stonewall Precinct Committeemens’ Request to Create Election Integrity Task Force and Conduct Hand Counts

Rachel Alexander
Celia Laughlin

Concerned Republican precinct committeemen and citizens in Navajo County, a small Republican-leaning county located in the northeastern part of the state, asked the Navajo County Board of Supervisors (NCBOS) recently to take election integrity measures, but are being stonewalled. 

Celia Laughlin told The Arizona Sun Times that in place of addressing their questions and requests at the last board meeting on April 23, Navajo County Manager Bryan Layton “gave a poll worker’s civics class instruction instead.” Layton was appointed county manager less than a year ago, and prior to that he worked in Texas for 10 years. 

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During Oral Arguments at the Arizona Court of Appeals in Kari Lake’s Election Lawsuit, Her Attorney Alleged Numerous Lies by Election Official

Rachel Alexander
Kari Lake Hearing

A panel of three Arizona Court of Appeals judges heard oral arguments on Thursday in Kari Lake’s Rule 60(b) appeal of her election lawsuit. Lake’s attorney, Kurt Olsen, alleged that Maricopa County Co-Elections Director Scott Jarrett told numerous lies.

Lake’s team filed the Rule 60(b) motion requesting a second trial based on newly found evidence, but the trial court judge, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, greatly limited the scope of her second trial and then ruled against her.

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Arizona Supreme Court Unanimously Reverses Sanctions Against AZGOP for Its Lawsuit Challenging Maricopa County’s Hand Count

Rachel Alexander

The Arizona Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling on Thursday reversing an award of sanctions against the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) and its attorneys for bringing an election integrity lawsuit. The AZGOP sued Maricopa County election officials over how they conducted the mandatory hand count audit after the 2020 election. The state’s highest court said there is some merit to election lawsuits, even if a “long shot,” and ruling against them for questioning an “election’s legitimacy” would have a “chilling effect.”

The AZGOP issued a statement after the state Supreme Court’s decision.

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Republicans’ Voter Registration Edge over Democrats Almost Doubles in Maricopa County, Statewide Increases to Almost Six Percent

Rachel Alexander
Voter Registration

Despite the Democratic wins in Arizona in 2020 and 2022, Republicans have been widening their voter registration edge over Democrats over the past four years. According to data from the Arizona Secretary of State earlier this year, between 2020 and 2024, Republicans increased their lead from approximately three percent to 5.77 percent. In Maricopa County, Republicans increased their lead even more, from four percent to seven percent. 

The change has occurred primarily with Democratic voter registrations; Republican voter registration has remained steady at 35 percent of voters. Statewide, Republicans constitute 35.07 percent of voters, followed by independents at 34.10 percent, then Democrats with 29.30 percent. While Republicans outnumber independents at the state level by almost 40,000 voters, independents outnumber Republicans in Maricopa County by 2,631 voters. 

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While Condemning ‘Dark Money,’ Democrats Funnel Huge Amounts of Anonymous Cash into 2024 Election, Outpacing Republicans

Rachel Alexander

A new review of financial documents shows Democrats are pouring more money than ever into 2024 political campaigns, especially in close races.

Since 2018, that amount has steadily increased in comparison to Republican spending. By 2020, the parts of the country that supported Joe Biden for president constituted 71 percent of the country’s GDP.

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Arizona Green Party Accuses Democratic Party of Interfering with ‘Fake’ Candidate and ‘Fraud’ in Their Primary Race for U.S. Senate

Rachel Alexander
Mike Norton

The Arizona Green Party (AZGP) accused Democrats of running Mike Norton as a sham candidate in their primary race for the U.S. Senate. The AZGP said a detailed thread posted on X earlier this month, that the scheme by the state Democratic Party was to have Norton drop out at the last minute before ballots were printed and endorse the Democratic candidate, Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03). The third party group noted that a candidate did that in the 2018 U.S. Senate race to allegedly benefit then-Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema – who later switched to an independent and is not running for reelection.

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Attorney General Kris Mayes Explains Why She is Prosecuting Arizona’s 2020 Alternate Slate of Electors for Trump, Gets Law Wrong

Rachel Alexander
Kris Mayes

Attorney General Kris Mayes held a press conference on Wednesday to announce the indictment of Arizona’s alternate slate of electors for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, along with other named and unnamed co-conspirators and unindicted co-conspirators including Trump.

Mayes made several incorrect assertions about the law.

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Arizona A.G. Kris Mayes Secures Indictments of Alternate Electors for Donald Trump and Others Likely Soon to be Named Including John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, with Trump Himself an Unindicted Co-Conspirator

Rachel Alexander
Arizona A.G. Kris Mayes

Attorney General Kris Mayes persuaded a grand jury to indict the 11 Arizonans who agreed to serve as a slate of alternate electors for Donald Trump had he won the 2020 election, along with others involved in the effort to resolve election illegalities in that election. They are charged with conspiracy, fraud and forgery.

According to multiple media sources, while only the 11 alternate electors are named, the other unindicted co-conspirators are considered likely to be Trump, his former attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Christina Bobb, and Jenna Ellis, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman. Their names are redacted since they have not been served yet.

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Candidate Running Against Rep. David Schweikert Drops Out After Four People Say They Never Signed Her Petition, Progressives Implicated

Rachel Alexander
David Schweikert

Michelle Martin, a Libertarian candidate running against Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-01), has dropped out of the race after at least four voters said someone illegally signed her petition with their signatures. Martin’s paperwork revealed that a registered Democrat named Jeremy Garrett was one of the petition signature gatherers, along with four other registered Democrats. Someone named Jeremy Garrett works as an Electoral Campaign Manager at the progressive group Our Voice Our Vote (OVOV). 

Schweikert told The Arizona Sun Times that this is clearly fraud and needs to be prosecuted. He said it has been referred to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

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California Judge Who Disbarred Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman Funneled Money to Super PAC Fighting Election Integrity

Rachel Alexander
Judge Yvette Roland

California disciplinary court judge Yvette Roland, who disbarred Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman last month, contributed to a Democratic PAC last year which funneled all of the contributions to a Super PAC that seeks to stop “undermining the most basic tenet of our democracy, the right to vote.” Despite the fact that the charges against Eastman were all related to his efforts investigating and stopping election corruption in the 2020 election, Roland did not recuse herself. 

While serving on the bench, Roland donated $250 twice on March 30, 2023 to Newsom for California Governor 2022 (NCG). Just 18 days later, NCG then contributed everything it had raised, about $23 million, to Campaign for Democracy Group (CDG), an independent expenditure Super PAC. CDG is primarily supporting Newsom. Its website states, “Across the country, extremist Republicans are systematically attacking the very foundations of a free society — bullying and criminalizing the most vulnerable, denying women equality and reproductive healthcare, attacking communities of color, dehumanizing immigrants seeking the American Dream, banning books and restricting speech, and undermining the most basic tenet of our democracy, the right to vote.”

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Kari Lake’s Attorneys Send Letter to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer Regarding Settling His Defamation Lawsuit

Rachel Alexander
Kari Lake and Stephen Richer

Kari Lake agreed earlier this month to settle the defamation lawsuit against her filed by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, citing the enormous cost it would take to go through a full trial. Her attorneys sent a letter on Monday to Richer’s attorneys regarding Richer’s proposed meet and confer terms, rejecting all three proposals from him, at times sarcastically. 

Lake is running for the U.S. Senate and still fighting two election lawsuits, one over her loss in the gubernatorial race and another challenging the use of voting machine tabulators in elections. Richer filed a defamation lawsuit against her for stating that he intentionally sabotaged the 2022 election. Approximately 300,000 ballots in the 2022 election lacked a chain of custody, a class 2 misdemeanor, but the county has strenuously fought litigation efforts to allow Lake to inspect the ballot affidavit envelopes and other requests from her and voter integrity groups related to the election anomalies.

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Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman Relays His Disbarment Story at Davos in the Desert’s Lawfare Event in Phoenix

Rachel Alexander

Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional scholar, John Eastman, spoke to the civic organization Davos in the Desert Wednesday about the lawfare he experienced, which resulted in disbarment and prosecution. The event was part of a larger conference the organization will broadcast all day on May 21, featuring legal experts discussing the lawfare against Trump.

Eastman, who was disbarred for advising Trump and representing him in challenging election illegalities in the 2020 election, began his talk by discussing how judges dismissed many of the 2020 election lawsuits for lack of standing. A judge in Pennsylvania dismissed one of their lawsuits, claiming that only the state legislature can challenge the election illegalities. However, other judges handling the 2020 election lawsuits ruled that political parties and candidates have standing.

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Arizona Republican Party Joins Two Other State GOPs Filing an Amicus Curiae Brief in Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s Voting Machine Tabulator Lawsuit

Rachel Alexander
Attorney William Olson

The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) submitted a joint Amicus Curiae brief on Thursday with the Georgia Republican Party and the Republican State Committee of Delaware supporting Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. The pair are appealing the lower courts’ decisions against their lawsuit challenging the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in elections. Under the new leadership of AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda, who has a lengthy history in election integrity work including heading the Voter Reference Foundation, the AZGOP is heavily focused on election integrity. 

Authored by attorney William J. Olson, the brief argues that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals erred by dismissing the case claiming Lake and Finchem lacked standing. The court affirmed the trial court’s granting of the defendants’ motion to dismiss, asserting that the pair lacked standing because “speculative allegations that voting machines may be hackable are insufficient to establish an injury in fact under Article III.” The complaint emphasized that the lower courts “conflated standing with merits, twisting the standing rules to require much more — that the complaint prove facts sufficient to grant relief.” 

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Conservative Candidate Brad Miller Running Against Election Fraud Denying Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkner

Rachel Alexander
Brad Miller

Republican Brad Miller, a longtime prosecutor who served as Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Marines, where he still works as a prosecutor, is challenging incumbent Pinal County Attorney Republican Kent Volkmer, an election fraud denier, for the office. Miller points to a long list of problems with the office, including mishandling criminal issues and election integrity, as reasons change is needed. 

Miller, who also practices civil law, states his principles on his website, “We must protect our borders, we must stand by and support our police, and we must safeguard our way of life.” He champions the Second Amendment, “I will protect your right to own a gun!” He said he will keep “woke policies” like ESG, “anti-American indoctrination,” and “dubious sexual education” pushed by “extreme leftist ideologies” out of education. He will “stand tall and provide a voice for parents and elected officials, allowing them to make informed decisions based on unbiased information.”

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Wisconsin Election Integrity Journalist Who Exposed Allegedly Illegal Democratic ‘Smurfing’ Donations Arrested

Rachel Alexander
Peter Bernegger

Peter Bernegger, president of Election Watch in Wisconsin, was arrested last week after filing complaints against officials and candidates he exposed for accepting donations allegedly facilitated by progressive activists in the names of people who were unaware of them. He was charged with a felony, simulating a legal process.

Bernegger posted on X after posting bail and being released, “This is politically motivated where they are trying to shut me up, to shut us all up. For those who don’t know, this is the second time they have come after me; the first time was dismissed in 15 minutes when the judge learned the truth of the matter.”

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Election Integrity Investigator Releases New Information About Likely Manipulation of Maricopa County’s Voting Machine Tabulators in the 2020 and 2022 Elections

Rachel Alexander

Ben Cotton, an IT expert proficient in forensics and digital systems analysis, issued a declaration last month about flaws with Maricopa County’s voting machine tabulators. It was included in Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s latest pleadings in their complaint challenging the use of voting machine tabulators in elections. One of those findings was that unauthorized executable programs were installed on the machines at least three times during the 2020 election, which could be used to alter election results without detection.

Cotton, whose firm CyFIR was hired by the Arizona Senate in 2021 to audit the 2020 election, summarized his findings, “It is clear, based on my findings, that unauthorized programs, databases, configuration settings and actions were present on the voting systems in Maricopa County for the elections in both 2020 and 2022.”

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Arizona Supreme Court Upholds Arizona’s 1864 Law Banning Almost All Abortions

Rachel Alexander
Abortion Supporters

The Arizona Supreme Court issued a 4-2 ruling Tuesday upholding Arizona’s 1864 territorial ban on all abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life, A.R.S. 13-3603. After the Arizona Legislature passed a law in 2022 banning abortions after 15 weeks except to save the mother’s life, A.R.S. 36-2322, Planned Parenthood challenged the older law, which was revived after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

Planned Parenthood alleged that the two laws were in conflict, so the earlier law must be struck down. After a split between the lower courts, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the law, finding that the two statutes were harmonious. The court relied upon legislative language accompanying the newer law, which said it did not supersede the earlier law. Both laws penalize the provider of the abortion, not the mother.

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Kari Lake and Mark Finchem File New Brief with U.S. Supreme Court in Voting Machine Tabulator Case After Defendants Fail to Respond

Rachel Alexander
Kari Lake Mark Finchem

Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed a Supplemental Brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, adding support for their Petition for Writ of Certiorari and Motion to Expedite asking the court to hear an appeal of the dismissal of their lawsuit to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in elections. The defendant Arizona officials failed to file a response to the pair’s petition, boosting the chances SCOTUS might accept the case and implying they did not object to the statements in the petition. 

The new brief added more allegations of false representations by Maricopa County officials. It said the courts relied on their false representations when they dismissed and affirmed their case, sanctioning the pair’s lawyers. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the plaintiffs’ injuries were “too speculative” for Article III, which requires showing of an injury. The brief said the court based this determination “in part on false representations that Maricopa County performed required preelection logic and accuracy (‘L&A’) testing and used certified and approved voting system software.” The court “expressly relied on false representations that Maricopa’s elections were protected from manipulation.”

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D.C. Bar Disciplinary Panel Makes Nonbinding Preliminary Determination of Culpability for a ‘Thought Crime’ in Disbarment Trial of Trump’s Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark

Rachel Alexander
Jeffrey Clark

The disciplinary trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark wrapped up on Thursday with the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary panel making a nonbinding preliminary determination that Clark was culpable on at least one of the two counts against him.

For drafting a letter that was never sent to Georgia officials advising them of their options in dealing with the 2020 election illegalities, he was charged with engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation, and engaging in conduct that seriously interferes with the administration of justice, Rules 8.4(c) and (d) of the Rules of Professional Conduct.

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During Jeffrey Clark’s Disbarment Trial, Cyber Security Expert Says Georgia’s 2020 Election Was Not ‘Conducted According to the Law’

Rachel Alexander
Harry Haury

The second and final week of the disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official began to wind down on Wednesday with more testimony from operations security expert Harry Haury. Clark, who is also a defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ RICO prosecution, is being disciplined for drafting a letter that was never sent to Georgia officials after the 2020 election advising them of their options for dealing with the election illegalities.

The trial is expected to wrap up on Thursday with closing statements.

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Georgia Election Integrity Expert Lists Significant Fraud in State’s 2020 Election at Jeffrey Clark’s Disbarment Trial

Rachel Alexander
Garland Favorito

The disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, continued into its second and final week on Tuesday, featuring testimony from three witnesses for him.

Clark, a defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ RICO prosecution, is being disciplined for drafting a letter never sent to Georgia officials after the 2020 election advising them of their options for dealing with the election illegalities.

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Former Fulton County Elections Official Explains Why He Voted Against Certification Twice During Jeffrey Clark’s Disbarment Trial

Rachel Alexander

The second week of the disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, resumed its second week on Monday. Clark, who is also a defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ RICO prosecution, is being disciplined for drafting a letter that was never sent to Georgia officials after the 2020 election advising them of their options for dealing with the election illegalities.

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Disbarment Trial of Trump’s Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark Features Stonewalling by D.C. Bar’s Attorney

Rachel Alexander
Jeffery Clark

The disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark began last week, featuring testimony from several prominent statisticians. Clark, who is also a defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s RICO prosecution, is being disciplined for drafting a letter that was never sent to Georgia officials after the 2020 election advising them of their options for dealing with the election illegalities. The trial is expected to last two weeks, into this coming week.

Hamilton Fox, the D.C. Bar’s attorney who has aggressively gone after other Trump attorneys, attempted to keep most of Clark’s witnesses from testifying. He described them as “sketchy witnesses” who want to talk about “supposed irregularities.” However, one of the witnesses who ultimately testified on Thursday had been allowed to testify in the similar disbarment trial of Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman last year. 

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State Senator Anthony Kern Holds Press Conference Blasting AZ AG Kris Mayes’ Convening a Grand Jury Against Him and Other Alternate Electors

Rachel Alexander
Arizona State Sen Anthony Kern

State Senator Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) held a press conference on March 24 denouncing Attorney General Kris Mayes convening a grand jury to indict Arizona’s alternate slate of electors for Donald Trump from 2020. Reports circulated earlier in March that Mayes issued grand jury subpoenas to people connected to Trump’s attempt to find fraud in the 2020 election.

Kern, who is running for Congress in Arizona’s Congressional District 8 to replace outgoing Representative Debbie Lesko amidst a competitive field of primary candidates, began, “What’s so wrong about standing up for the rule of law and our Arizona constitutional principles, and when did that become a crime?”

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Kari Lake and Mark Finchem Add Cybersecurity Experts’ Testimony About Newly Discovered ‘Artificial Control’ over the Tabulation of Ballots Using Electronic Voting Machines to their SCOTUS Appeal

Rachel Alexander

Attorneys for Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed additional pleadings last week with their Petition for Certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court, providing new evidence to their plea to the court to reconsider the lower courts’ rulings against their lawsuit to stop the use of voting machine tabulators. The new filings include a Motion to Expedite and declarations from top cybersecurity experts, who provided evidence that “overwhelmingly demonstrates” that the election results in 2020 and 2022 from Maricopa County contained “artificial control over the tabulation of ballots and the election results for the November 2020 election.” Additionally, they asserted that the county thwarted efforts to obtain the new data, which is a crime punishable by up to a year of incarceration.

The appendix to the Petitioners’ Motion to Expedite included 176 pages of new affidavits from Clay Parikh, Benjamin Cotton, and Walter Daugherity. Daugherity, who taught computer science and engineering at both the undergraduate and graduate levels for 37 years and served as a computer consultant to major firms and government agencies, including classified work, said this was his second declaration filed in the case, based on the new information from Maricopa County. That information included system log files from Maricopa County’s electronic voting tabulators in the 2020 election, and according to Parikh, “a copy of Maricopa County’s election systems database and the forensic images of the vote center tabulator memory cards used in the 2020 General Election.” 

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State Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli and State Senator Wendy Rogers Announce Felony Cybersecurity Breaches of Arizona’s Electronic Voting Systems

Rachel Alexander
Sonny Borelli

State Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu) and State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) held a press conference on Wednesday revealing that a cybersecurity expert discovered that voting machine software used in Maricopa County’s elections in 2020 and 2022 was compromised. Borrelli said “there is probable cause” of a crime, and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has been notified.

Borrelli said, “A few days ago I received documentation and a sworn declaration by a cybersecurity expert that examined the data from the 2020 and 2022 elections, where it has been determined that the data and the equipment had been altered. The Election Assistance Commission never approved this altered software. In Maricopa County’s previous representation that the election software is EAC certified, including to the Arizona Senate, [that was] false [testimony].”

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Arizona Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments from Arizona Republican Party Appealing Sanctions over Election Lawsuit, Grills Opposing Attorney

Rachel Alexander
Arizona Supreme Court

The Arizona Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week from the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) and opposing litigant Secretary of State (AZSOS) over lower courts awarding sanctions against the AZGOP for filing a “groundless” lawsuit “in bad faith.” The AZGOP sued Arizona officials immediately after the 2020 election for conducting a post-election audit that the AZGOP contended did not comply with the law. The AZGOP said the law required the audit to be conducted at the precinct level, but the audit was conducted at the voting center level according to the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPG), which the AZGOP claimed contradicted state law. 

The AZGOP said A.R.S. § 16-602 requires precinct-level audits. The relevant part of that statute, (B)(1), provides, “ At least two percent of the precincts in that county, or two precincts, whichever is greater, shall be selected at random from a pool consisting of every precinct in that county.” In contrast, the EPM states that in counties which utilize vote centers, vote centers will be used for the audits. 

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Election Integrity Attorney Stefanie Lambert Arrested on Unrelated Bench Warrant After She Turned Over ‘Criminal’ Documents from Dominion to Law Enforcement

Rachel Alexander
Stefanie Lambert

Stefanie Lambert, an election integrity attorney in Michigan, was arrested on Monday in Washington D.C. for failing to appear at a court hearing in Michigan involving charges against her for allegedly breaching voting machines. After agreeing to surrender to authorities in Michigan, Lambert was released on $10,000 bond. Lambert said in court filings and a statement that she failed to show up for the hearing due to a miscommunication with her former counsel, who told her the meeting was canceled. 

Lambert was arrested after taking part in a hearing Monday representing her client, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, against a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems filed against him in 2021. Dominion sued Byrne for predicting months before the 2020 election that there would be illegal election activity to change the results of the election, and named Dominion as one of the actors involved.

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Arizona Republican Leaders Submit Brief Defending Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby from AG Kris Mayes’ Prosecution over 2022 Election Integrity Efforts

Rachel Alexander
Warren Petersen Ben Toma

State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and Speaker of the House Ben Toma (R-Peoria) filed a Motion for Leave to File Brief as Amicus Curiae in the prosecution of Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby on March 8.

Crosby, along with Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, was indicted by a grand jury in November 2023 for briefly delaying canvassing of the 2022 election in order to investigate the laws that were broken. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes charged them with the class 5 felonies of Interference With an Election Officer—even though they were in part administering elections themselves as officials—and conspiracy since they both voted together to delay the canvassing.

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Kari Lake, Mark Finchem Appeal Their Case Seeking to Ban Electronic Voting Machine Tabulators to the U.S. Supreme Court, Add New Evidence Including ‘False Statements’ by Defendants

Rachel Alexander
Kari Lake and Mark Finchem

Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed a Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, appealing the dismissal of their lawsuit against Arizona officials to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators. The 210-page petition added new allegations stating that the defendants lied to the court and that new evidence had surfaced exposing the vulnerabilities of the machines to bad actors.

“New evidence from other litigation and public-record requests shows defendants made false statements to the district court regarding the safeguards allegedly followed to ensure the accuracy of the vote, on which the district court relied,” the petition asserted. 

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Progressive Election Lawyer Marc Elias Attacks New Election Integrity Lawsuits in Arizona, Claims Republicans Want to Cheat

Rachel Alexander

Republicans have filed five election integrity lawsuits recently in Arizona, attracting the ire of election fraud denier and progressive attorney Marc Elias.

Elias issued a video last week analyzing some of the lawsuits, which he described as “anti-voting lawsuits” that seek to make it “harder to vote and easier to cheat,” part of a “plan Republicans have to undermine elections and suppress voters.”

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Outcomes of the 92 Election Cases from the 2020 Election Reveal That Judges Didn’t Review Evidence or Address Election Fraud, Part 2

Rachel Alexander

The Arizona Sun Times examined the outcomes of the 92 election cases challenging illegalities in the 2020 election and determined that contrary to reports in the mainstream media, almost all of the judges did not consider evidence of election fraud.

This was in large part because the lawsuits didn’t allege election fraud, which is a very specific crime that usually requires a lot of discovery. Lawsuits challenging election outcomes generally cite other laws that are broken, which has long been considered sufficient to overturn elections. Judges issued their rulings in the 2020 cases without getting into the evidence or much discovery.

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Former Maricopa Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan Makes Bid for Sheriff, Vows to Restore Trust and Leadership to the Office

Rachel Alexander
Jerry Sheridan

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s race has started heating up, due to former Arizona Department of Public Safety Director Frank Milstead entering the race, where he faces former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan. Sheridan, who ran unsuccessfully in 2020 for the office, took a break from shooting in the desert with his grandson to be interviewed.

Sheridan grew up in a law enforcement family in Queens, where both his dad and two uncles served as officers with the New York Police Department. He intended to enter college immediately after finishing high school, but his family moved to Arizona, and he admired his father and uncle so much that it wasn’t difficult deciding to go directly into law enforcement instead. 

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Former Arizona Department of Public Safety Director Frank Milstead Enters Race for Maricopa County Sheriff

Rachel Alexander
Frank Milstead

The Republican primary for Maricopa County Sheriff just became a lot more interesting, with a second heavy-hitter entering the race, former Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Frank Milstead. Jerry Sheridan, who served as chief deputy under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is already in the race, along with several lesser known candidates. Current Democratic Sheriff Paul Penzone is not running for reelection. 

Milstead told The Arizona Sun Times that the reason he is running is because as a police officer, he saw how bad the crime is in Maricopa County and felt he needed to do something about it. “I live by the rule that if I’m going to complain about something, I’d better step up and do something about it,” he said.

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Jeffrey Clark’s Attorney Tells Georgia Judge Six Reasons Why Fani Willis Should be Disqualified, Calls Her Office a ‘Global Laughingstock’

Rachel Alexander
Harry MacDougald

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee heard arguments last week from defense attorneys about why Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from her RICO case against former President Donald Trump and his associates.  

Willis had an affair with Nathan Wade, the prosecutor she appointed to lead the case. This caused attorneys, including Harry MacDougald, who represents Jeffrey Clark, to list six conflicts of interest she faces in a presentation to the court.

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Kari Lake’s Attorney Bryan Blehm Encounters Hostility Dealing with the State Bar of Arizona’s Disciplinary Proceedings

Rachel Alexander

Kari Lake’s attorney Bryan Blehm is encountering pushback defending himself against the State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary proceedings. The Arizona bar is trying to disbar Blehm and two of Lake’s other attorneys for asserting in a brief that it was an undisputed fact that 35,000 ballots were inserted into the 2022 election at Runbeck Election Systems, Maricopa County’s third-party mail-in ballot processing company. The Arizona bar also brought charges against Blehm for a post on X criticizing the Arizona Supreme Court for setting up a disinformation task force that appeared to be directed in part to squelch election challenges from attorneys representing Republicans.

Blehm, who is representing himself, is in the discovery phase of the disciplinary proceedings, where parties provide disclosures to each other and serve interrogatories or subpoenas for information. 

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Constitutional Attorney Lists Five Ways Georgia DA Fani Willis Committed Misconduct Prosecuting Trump and His Associates

Rachel Alexander
Fani Willis

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is currently under fire for appointing her former lover, Nathan Wade, as chief prosecutor in the RICO prosecution of Donald Trump and his associates, and a nationally recognized constitutional expert said that is not the only major misconduct. The expert, who preferred not to be identified, said there are five other instances of improper behavior by Willis.

The first instance was so egregious that it undermined the entire grounds for the prosecution, the expert said. The prosecution arose from a phone call between Trump, his associates, and Georgia officials discussing what to do about illegal activity in Georgia during the 2020 election. The call was recorded by a deputy secretary of state under Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was in Florida at the time. Unlike Georgia, where only one party on a phone call needs to know it is being recorded, Florida has a multi-party consent law for recording phone conversations, which means all parties on the call must know about the recording and agree to it. None of the exceptions applied, such as law enforcement or where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

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Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman in Good Spirits About the Ongoing Lawfare Against Him, Both Prosecution and Disbarment Proceedings

Rachel Alexander

Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, who is undergoing lawfare as a result of his representation of Trump in the 2020 election challenges, is facing multiple legal proceedings but is in good spirits.

Eastman, widely considered one of the top legal scholars on the right, who founded the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, served as dean for Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told The Arizona Sun Times during an interview that he remains “cheerful but defiant.”

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Federal Court Upholds Most of Arizona’s Two New Election Integrity Laws Regarding Proof of Citizenship, Found No ‘Discriminatory Purpose’

Rachel Alexander
Register to Vote

Both sides are calling a federal district court’s ruling a win, which upheld most of two new Arizona election integrity laws. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton struck down parts of HB 2492, which requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, and HB 2243, which requires quarterly reporting of the number of Arizona voters who did not list their citizenship status.

State Senator Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), the primary sponsor of both bills, expressed his disappointment to The Arizona Sun Times. “Bolton’s ruling is potentially the most intellectually dishonest, schizophrenic legal determination in the last half century. Bolton has shown a clear disdain for legislative authority, while simultaneously weaponizing the court against common sense. The idea that a person wouldn’t need to produce documentary proof of citizenship to vote in U.S. elections is lunacy. I can only hope that this case ultimately works its way to the U.S. Supreme Court where there still remains a semblance of sanity thanks to President Trump’s justices and the great Clarence Thomas.”

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America First Legal Expands Landmark Election Integrity Case to Yavapai County After Maricopa County Tried to ‘Sabotage’ It

Rachel Alexander
Voting Line

America First Legal (AFL) “expanded a landmark Arizona election integrity case” last week, suing Yavapai County. AFL said in a press release that it withdrew the initial election integrity complaint against Maricopa County election officials due to “Maricopa County’s schemes to sabotage the case,” re-filing it in Yavapai County. The new lawsuit, which is substantially the same as the initial one, added an additional allegation, that during the 2022 elections, at least one voting center in Yavapai County had printer malfunctions that caused long lines. 

James Rogers, America First Legal Senior Counsel, said in a statement, “What is Maricopa County’s response to the legitimate concerns of its citizens? Frivolous procedural motions trying to delay the case and ensure it is not heard on its merits. This voluntary dismissal is not the end of this case, but just the beginning.”

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