North Carolina lawmakers on the state’s Elections and Ethics Committee sent a letter to the state’s Attorney General urging him to comply with two federal subpoenas.
Earlier this month, the North Carolina Department of Justice missed the deadline to respond to two federal grand jury subpoenas issued in September 2018 and which requested five years worth of voter and ballot data from 44 counties. In addition, the subpoenas requested eight years of data for voters statewide and eight years of data from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles.
North Carolina House Elections Committee co-chairs Representative Holly Grange (R-D20) and Representative Destin Hall (R-D87) sent a letter on Tuesday to the State Board of Elections and Attorney General Josh Stein.
Representatives Grange and Hall were recently appointed co-chairs of the North Carolina House Committee on Elections and Ethics Law by Speaker Tim Moore (R-D111).
The letter, which was included in a press release put out by Speaker Moore, urges the agencies to comply with the federal grand jury subpoenas.
“We are disturbed that the State Board declined to comply with grand jury subpoenas which seek to discover potential election fraud in North Carolina,” wrote Representatives Grange and Hall in the letter.
“This apparent refusal comes even though federal officials extended the deadline for your compliance so as not to impact the then-impending elections and clarified that the scope of the document production did not include private voter information,” Grange and Hall wrote.
“Refusing to cooperate with a federal investigation is unacceptable,” wrote the Elections and Ethics Committee co-chairs. “With election security dominating the headlines in North Carolina it is critical that federal and state elections officials work with law enforcement to ensure that all North Carolina elections are conducted in a secure fashion.”
The letter, dated January 29th, closes with a request for a response within ten days.
If the two departments intend not to comply with the subpoenas, the co-chairs ask for a “full explanation” of why they believe this non-compliance is the “proper course of action.”
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A.P. Dillon is the North Carolina Bureau Chief for The Tennesee Star and a reporter at Battleground State News. Follow A.P. Dillon on Twitter. Email Tips to [email protected].
Photo “Holly Grange” by Holly Grange.
Photo “Destin Hall” by Destin Hall.
