There’s no doubt there are a lot of Americans who do not look favorably on their local elections officials these days – those elections officials who took thousands of dollars or more from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and then acted as a Democrat get-out-the-vote office during the 2020 election.
In some places that was illegal – Wisconsin already had a law that barred that. And many more states are adopting similar provisions.
But it doesn’t necessarily follow that those ordinary citizens who may have had their legitimate votes diluted by nefarious scheming by leftists are going to respond outside the law.
Yet that’s what a federal program appears to suggest.
And because federal officials have declined to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request about their strategies against Americans, they are being sued.
It is Judicial Watch, a longtime government watchdog, that announced a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice “for records concerning a new task force set up to address threats to election officials.”
“The Biden Justice Department appears to have been manufacturing another fake crisis of ‘threats’ against government officials in order to justify targeting American citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights to demand election officials combat voter fraud and conduct free and fair elections,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
“What is the Garland DOJ hiding?”
The lawsuit comes after the DOJ declined to respond to an August 30, 2021, FOIA request.
Sought were records about the DOJ’s August 2021 virtual meeting pertaining to threats to election officials. It includes records about the meeting, records of those participants, audio or other recordings and transcripts and more.
The watchdog explained the problem: “On August 26, 2021, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland convened a ‘virtual discussion’ with a bipartisan group of over 1,400 election officials to discuss ‘mounting and persistent threats to the safety of election officials and workers across the country’ and to introduce DOJ’s recently launched Election Threats Task Force. According to the readout of the virtual meeting, ‘the Task Force is composed of the Department’s Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, the Civil Rights Division’s Voting and Criminal Sections, and the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section, as well as the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.'”
It was during the meeting that Associate Attorney General Gupta revealed that the Civil Rights Division is participating in the Task Force and has established “a helpline funded by the Office of Victims of Crime that connects victims of crimes and threats to trained professionals who can provide emotional support, information and referrals in over 200 languages.”
The watchdog noted that FBI chief Christopher Wray highlighted the need to report “all” election-related communications that are “troubling.”
“Even if it is unclear whether there is a violation,” he said.
He suggested that’s so that police “can investigate, identify trends and share information with partners across the country.”
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