Suits and Litigation (Civil)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Pennsylvania Court Orders Undated Ballots to Be Counted, Siding With McCormick For Now

      by

      David McCormick, who was trailing Dr. Mehmet Oz by fewer than 1,000 votes, had sued to have ballots without handwritten dates on their return envelopes counted.Update: David McCormick conceded the exceedingly close race for the Republican nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania on Friday to Dr. Mehmet Oz. Read the news story.A Pennsylvania court ordered election officials on Thursday to count undated mail-in ballots for now in a nationally watched Republican Senate primary, granting a temporary injunction to David McCormick as he trailed Dr. Mehmet Oz amid a statewide recount.Fewer than 1,000 votes separate Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, from Dr. Oz, the celebrity physician backed by former President Donald J. Trump, in a race that could ultimately determine control of the divided Senate.The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania concluded that a May 23 lawsuit by Mr. McCormick had raised sufficient claims that a state law requiring voters to hand-write the date on return envelopes for mail-in ballots could lead to their disenfranchisement.Republicans have fought to enforce the rule, siding with Dr. Oz in the lawsuit.In the 42-page opinion, Renée Cohn Jubelirer, the court’s president judge, directed county election boards to report two sets of tallies to the acting secretary of the commonwealth, one that includes the undated ballots and one that does not. That way, when a final decision is made on whether to accept the ballots, the judge wrote, the vote count will be readily available.In the opinion, Judge Cohn Jubelirer said there was no question that the contested ballots had been returned by the May 17 deadline.“The court notes that no party has asserted, or even hinted, that the issue before the court involves allegations of fraud,” she wrote. “The parties have agreed that this election was free and fair.”A campaign spokeswoman for Mr. McCormick lauded the court order in a statement on Friday.“We are pleased the court agrees on ensuring valid Republican votes that were signed and returned on time, as shown by their time-stamp, are counted so the party can get behind a strong nominee in the fall,” the campaign spokeswoman, Jess Szymanski, said.Casey Contres, the campaign manager for Dr. Oz, declined to comment about the decision on Friday.Judge Cohn Jubelirer wrote that the court’s guidance should be uniform, noting that some counties had decided to accept the undated ballots and others had not.“Without court action, there exists the very real possibility that voters within this commonwealth will not be treated equally depending on the county in which they vote,” she wrote. “The court begins with the overarching principle that the Election Code should be liberally construed so as not to deprive electors of their right to elect a candidate of their choice.”The treatment of undated mail-in ballots is at the heart of another legal dispute in Pennsylvania. That one is before the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Tuesday paused the counting of those ballots in a judicial race in Lehigh County, Pa., a case that could reverberate in the G.O.P. Senate primary.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Michael Sussmann Is Acquitted in Case Brought by Trump-Era Prosecutor

      by

      The Democratic-linked lawyer was accused of lying to the F.B.I. about his clients when he passed on a tip about possible connections between Donald J. Trump and Russia.WASHINGTON — Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was acquitted on Tuesday of lying to the F.B.I. in 2016 when he shared a tip about possible connections between Donald J. Trump and Russia.The verdict was a significant blow to the special counsel, John H. Durham, who was appointed by the Trump administration three years ago to scour the Trump-Russia investigation for any wrongdoing.But Mr. Durham has yet to fulfill expectations from Mr. Trump and his supporters that he would uncover and prosecute a “deep state” conspiracy against the former president. Instead, he has developed only two cases that led to charges: the one against Mr. Sussmann and another against a researcher for the so-called Steele dossier, whose trial is set for later this year.Both consist of simple charges of making false statements, rather than a more sweeping charge like conspiracy to defraud the government. And both involve thin or dubious allegations about Mr. Trump’s purported ties to Russia that were put forward not by government officials, but by outside investigators.The case against Mr. Sussmann centered on odd internet data that cybersecurity researchers discovered in 2016 after it became public that Russia had hacked Democrats and Mr. Trump had encouraged the country to target Mrs. Clinton’s emails.The researchers said the data might reflect a covert communications channel using servers for the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, which has ties to the Kremlin. The F.B.I. briefly looked at the suspicions and dismissed them.On Sept. 19, 2016, Mr. Sussmann brought those suspicions to a senior F.B.I. official. In charging Mr. Sussmann with a felony, prosecutors contended that he falsely told the official that he was not there on behalf of any client, concealing that he was working for both Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and a technology executive who had given him the tip.Mr. Durham and prosecutors used court filings and trial testimony to describe how Mr. Sussmann, while working for a Democratic-linked law firm and logging his time to the Clinton campaign, had been trying to get reporters to write about the Alfa Bank suspicions.But trying to persuade reporters to write about such suspicions is not a crime. Mr. Sussmann’s guilt or innocence turned on a narrow issue: whether he made a false statement to the senior F.B.I. official at the 2016 meeting by saying he was sharing those suspicions on his own.Mr. Durham used the Sussmann case to put forward a larger conspiracy: that there was a joint enterprise to essentially frame Mr. Trump for collusion with Russia by getting the F.B.I. to investigate the suspicions so reporters would write about it. The scheme, Mr. Durham implied, involved the Clinton campaign; its opposition research firm, Fusion GPS; Mr. Sussmann; and the cybersecurity expert who had brought the odd data and analysis to him.That insinuation thrilled Mr. Trump’s supporters, who have embraced his claim that the Russia investigation was a “hoax” and have sought to conflate the official inquiry with sometimes dubious accusations. In reality, the Alfa Bank matter was a sideshow: The F.B.I. had already opened its inquiry on other grounds before Mr. Sussmann passed on the tip; the final report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, made no mention of the Alfa Bank suspicions.But the case Mr. Durham and his team used to float their broad insinuations was thin: one count of making a false statement in a meeting with no other witnesses. In a rebuke to Mr. Durham; the lead lawyer on the trial team, Andrew DeFilippis; and his colleagues, the 12 jurors voted unanimously to find Mr. Sussmann not guilty.Some supporters of Mr. Trump had been bracing for that outcome. They pointed to the District of Columbia’s reputation as a heavily Democratic area and suggested that a jury might be politically biased against a Trump-era prosecutor trying to convict a defendant who was working for the Clinton campaign.The judge had told the jurors that they were not to account for their political views when deciding the facts. The jury forewoman, who did not give her name, told reporters afterward that “politics were not a factor” and that she thought bringing the case had been unwise.Mr. Durham expressed disappointment in the verdict but said he respected the decision by the jury, which deliberated for about six hours.“I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case,” he said in a statement.Outside the courthouse, Mr. Sussmann read a brief statement to reporters, praising the jury, his defense team and those who supported him during what had been a difficult year.“I told the truth to the F.B.I., and the jury clearly recognized that with their unanimous verdict today,” he said, adding, “Despite being falsely accused, I am relieved that justice ultimately prevailed in this case.”During the trial, the defense had argued that Mr. Sussmann brought the matter to the F.B.I. only when he thought The New York Times was on the verge of writing an article about the matter, so that the bureau would not be caught flat-footed.Officials for the Clinton campaign testified that they had not told or authorized Mr. Sussmann to go to the F.B.I. Doing so was against their interests because they did not trust the bureau, and it could slow down the publication of any article, they said.James Baker, as the F.B.I.’s general counsel in 2016, met with Mr. Sussmann that September. Mr. Baker testified that he had asked Eric Lichtblau, then a reporter at The Times working on the Alfa Bank matter, to slow down so the bureau could have time to investigate it.Mr. Sussmann’s defense team offered the jurors many potential paths to acquittal, contending that the prosecution had yet to prove multiple necessary elements beyond a reasonable doubt.His lawyers attacked as doubtful whether Mr. Sussmann actually uttered the words that he had no client at his meeting with the F.B.I. in September.That issue was complicated after a text message came to light in which Mr. Sussmann, arranging for the meeting a day earlier, indicated that he was reaching out on his own. But it was what, if anything, he said at the meeting itself that was at issue.Mr. Baker testified that he was “100 percent” certain that Mr. Sussmann repeated those words to his face. But defense lawyers pointed out that he had recalled the meeting differently on many other occasions.The defense team also argued that Mr. Sussmann was in fact not there on behalf of any client, even though he had clients with an interest in the topic. And they questioned whether it mattered, since the F.B.I. knew he represented the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign on other issues, and agents would have investigated the allegations regardless.Midmorning, the jury asked to see a trial exhibit meant to bolster the defense’s argument that Mr. Sussmann did not consider himself to be representing the Clinton campaign. It was a record of taxi rides Mr. Sussmann expensed for the Sept. 19 meeting at F.B.I. headquarters.He logged those rides to the firm rather than to the Clinton campaign or to the technology executive, Rodney Joffe, who had worked with the data scientists who developed the suspicions and brought them to Mr. Sussmann. Prosecutors asserted that Mr. Joffe was his other hidden client in the meeting.During the trial, prosecutors had made much of how Mr. Sussmann logged extensive hours on the Alfa Bank matter to the Clinton campaign in law firm billing records — including phone calls and meetings with reporters and with his partner at the time, Marc Elias, the general counsel of the Clinton campaign.Defense lawyers acknowledged that the Clinton campaign had been Mr. Sussmann’s client for the purpose of trying to persuade reporters to write about the matter, but argued that he was not working for anyone when he brought the same materials to the F.B.I.In a statement, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, two of Mr. Sussmann’s defense lawyers, criticized Mr. Durham for bringing the indictment.“Michael Sussmann should never have been charged in the first place,” they said. “This is a case of extraordinary prosecutorial overreach. And we believe that today’s verdict sends an unmistakable message to anyone who cares to listen: Politics is no substitute for evidence, and politics has no place in our system of justice.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Peter Navarro, Former Trump Aide, Gets Grand Jury Subpoena in Jan. 6 Inquiry

      by

      The subpoena, the latest indication of an expanding inquiry by federal prosecutors, seeks Mr. Navarro’s testimony and any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year.Peter Navarro, who as a White House adviser to President Donald J. Trump worked to keep Mr. Trump in office after his defeat in the 2020 election, disclosed on Monday that he has been summoned to testify on Thursday to a federal grand jury and to provide prosecutors with any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year, including “any communications” with Mr. Trump.The subpoena to Mr. Navarro — which he said the F.B.I. served at his house last week — seeks his testimony about materials related to the buildup to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and signals that the Justice Department investigation may be progressing to include activities of people in the White House.Mr. Navarro revealed the existence of the subpoena in a draft of a lawsuit he said he is preparing to file against the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.Mr. Navarro, who plans to represent himself in the suit, is hoping to persuade a federal judge to block the subpoena, which he calls the “fruit of the poisonous tree.”The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.The grand jury’s subpoena, Mr. Navarro said, builds on a separate subpoena issued to him in February by the committee. That subpoena sought documents and testimony about an effort to overturn the election nicknamed the “Green Bay Sweep,” and a Jan. 2, 2021, call that Mr. Navarro participated in with Mr. Trump and his lawyers in which they attempted to persuade hundreds of state lawmakers to join the effort.Mr. Navarro has refused to cooperate with the committee. He was found in contempt of Congress, and the House referred the contempt case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. In his draft lawsuit, he called the committee’s subpoena “illegal and unenforceable.”Mr. Navarro said the grand jury subpoena was directly related to the contempt of Congress referral. Asked if he planned to comply and appear on Thursday to testify, Mr. Navarro responded, “T.B.D.”The subpoena is the latest sign the Justice Department’s investigation into the attack has moved beyond the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol. Federal prosectors have charged more than 800 people in connection with the attack.The subpoena sent last week to Mr. Navarro is the first known to have been issued in connection to the department’s Jan. 6 investigations to someone who worked in the Trump White House. But it follows others issued to people connected to various strands of the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack and its prelude.In April, Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer, revealed that he had been served with his own grand jury subpoena, asking for records about people who organized, spoke at or provided security for pro-Trump rallies in Washington after the election, including Mr. Trump’s incendiary event near the White House on Jan. 6.Mr. Alexander’s subpoena also sought records about members of the executive or legislative branches who may have helped to plan or execute the rallies, or who tried to “obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the 2020 presidential election.Last week, word emerged that the same grand jury, sitting in Washington, had more recently issued a different set of subpoenas requesting information about the role that a group of lawyers close to Mr. Trump may have had played in a plan create alternate slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.The lawyers named in the subpoena included Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani; Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani; John Eastman, one of the former president’s chief legal advisers during the postelection period; and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote a pair of memos laying out the details of the plan.Those subpoenas also requested information about any members of the Trump campaign who may been involved with the alternate elector scheme and about several Republican officials in Georgia who took part in it, including David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.Mr. Navarro’s subpoena, by his own account, was issued by a different grand jury.In the draft of the suit he said he intends to file, he argues that only Mr. Trump can authorize him to testify. He asks a judge to instruct Mr. Graves, the U.S. attorney in Washington, to negotiate his appearance with Mr. Trump. Mr. Navarro cites Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over materials related to the attack on the Capitol.“The executive privilege invoked by President Trump is not mine or Joe Biden’s to waive,” Mr. Navarro writes. “Rather, as with the committee, the U.S. attorney has constitutional and due process obligations to negotiate my appearance.”An effort by Mr. Trump to block release of White House materials related to the Jan. 6 attack on the grounds of executive privilege was rejected by a federal appeals court in January, and the Supreme Court denied Mr. Trump’s request for a stay of the decision.Mr. Navarro, who helped coordinate the Trump administration’s pandemic response through his role overseeing the Defense Production Act, has insisted that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not part of the plans he backed, which he said included having Vice President Mike Pence reject electors for Mr. Biden when Congress met in a joint session to formally count them.In a book, Mr. Navarro wrote that the idea for the “Green Bay Sweep” was for Mr. Pence to be the “quarterback” of the plan and “put certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks while Congress and the various state legislatures involved investigate all of the fraud and election irregularities.”Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report claiming election fraud as part of what he called an “Immaculate Deception.” In an interview with The New York Times, he said he relied on “thousands of affidavits” from Mr. Giuliani, and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, to help produce the report, which claimed there “may well have been a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the election deck against the Trump-Pence ticket.”There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and the Jan. 6 committee described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”Mr. Navarro said that he made sure Republican members of Congress received a copy of his report and that more than 100 members of Congress had signed on to the plans. (Ultimately, 147 Republican members of Congress objected to certifying at least one state for Mr. Biden.)An aide to Mr. Navarro was also in contact with a group of Trump allies who were pushing for the former president to order the seizure of voting machines. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      McCormick Sues to Count Undated Mail-In Ballots, Trailing Oz

      by

      In a lawsuit filed on Monday in Pennsylvania, the Republican Senate candidate David McCormick demanded that undated mail-in ballots should be counted in his primary race against the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom he trailed by less than 1,000 votes.Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund chief, asked the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to allow election officials in the state’s 67 counties to accept mail-in ballots from voters who turned them in by the May 17 deadline but did not write the date on the outer return envelopes.That step is required by a state law, one that Republicans have fought to preserve.The legal action could be a prelude to a cascade of lawsuits and challenges in one of the nation’s most intensely watched primaries, one that could ultimately determine control of the divided Senate. The seat will be open after Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican, steps down this year.The filing preceded a May 26 deadline for Pennsylvania’s secretary of state to determine whether a recount is triggered in the race, an automatic step when the top two candidates are within half a percentage point. About two-tenths of a percentage point separated Mr. McCormick on Monday from Dr. Oz, whom former President Donald J. Trump has been nudging to declare victory. The McCormick campaign was said to have invested heavily in its absentee-voting efforts.“These ballots were indisputably submitted on time — they were date-stamped upon receipt — and no fraud or irregularity has been alleged,” Ronald L. Hicks Jr., a lawyer for Mr. McCormick, wrote in the 35-page lawsuit.Mr. Hicks, a trial and appellate lawyer in Pittsburgh, was part of a phalanx of lawyers enlisted by Mr. Trump who unsuccessfully sought to challenge mail-in ballots after the 2020 presidential election. He later moved to withdraw from that case.In the McCormick campaign’s lawsuit, Mr. Hicks took the opposite view of mail-in ballots, saying that election boards in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania and Blair County in the central part of the state have balked at counting the undated ballots. Those counties, he said, were delaying taking action until after Tuesday when they are required to report unofficial results to the state.“The boards’ refusal to count the ballots at issue violates the protections of the right to vote under the federal Civil Rights Act and the Pennsylvania Constitution,” Mr. Hicks wrote.In the lawsuit, the McCormick campaign cited a recent ruling by a federal court panel that barred elections officials in Lehigh County, Pa., from rejecting absentee and mail-in ballots cast in the November 2021 municipal election because they were not dated.“Every Republican primary vote should be counted, including the votes of Pennsylvania’s active-duty military members who risk their lives to defend our constitutional right to vote,” Jess Szymanski, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCormick’s campaign, said in an email on Monday night.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      John Eastman Says He Dealt Directly With Trump Over Jan. 6 Plans

      by

      John Eastman said in a court filing that he had received handwritten notes from President Donald J. Trump as they strategized about how to keep him in power.WASHINGTON — The conservative lawyer John Eastman, the architect of a strategy to overturn the 2020 election, dealt directly with President Donald J. Trump and received handwritten notes from him as the men sought to keep Mr. Trump in power, according to a new court filing.The filing underscored how instrumental Mr. Eastman was in devising ways to fight Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, and how personally involved Mr. Trump was in the attempt to keep the presidency in his hands. It also provided further documentation of how members of the Trump campaign and White House aides were involved in the plans.The filing came as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is preparing for public hearings in June about the attempt to overturn the election, and as more information has emerged about Mr. Eastman’s role in advising state officials in Pennsylvania to reject votes cast in favor of Mr. Biden.Mr. Eastman did not release the contents of his communications with Mr. Trump and others in the White House and the Trump campaign, but he described them in general terms in a filing in his federal lawsuit in California against the House committee. He is fighting the release of hundreds of documents that the panel has demanded via subpoena, including by arguing that some of them are protected by attorney-client privilege.In the filing on Thursday, Mr. Eastman argued that some of his emails with the White House and Trump campaign were covered by attorney-client privilege because, he said, the people he communicated with were functioning as “conduits” for or “agents” of Mr. Trump. He said he mostly communicated with Mr. Trump using six intermediaries, three of whom worked for the Trump campaign and three of whom worked directly for Mr. Trump while he was in office.But Mr. Eastman said he also spoke directly to Mr. Trump, and the filing stated that Mr. Eastman received two “handwritten notes from former President Trump about information that he thought might be useful for the anticipated litigation.”“While Dr. Eastman could (and did) communicate directly with former President Trump at times, many of his communications with the president were necessarily through these agents,” Mr. Eastman’s lawyers, Anthony T. Caso and Charles Burnham, wrote, referring to the six intermediaries.The documents Mr. Eastman is seeking to block from release include the two handwritten notes from Mr. Trump; communications with what he called “potential clients,” including seven state legislators, who were seeking advice about how to challenge their states’ election results; a document discussing “various scenarios for Jan. 6”; and another discussing the “need to pursue election integrity litigation even in the event of Trump loss for the good of the country.”In March, the federal judge in the case ruled that Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump had most likely committed felonies as they pushed to overturn the election, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States. The actions taken by Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman, the judge found, amounted to “a coup in search of a legal theory.”At the time, the judge, David O. Carter of Federal District Court for the Central District of California, ordered the release of more than 100 of Mr. Eastman’s emails; Mr. Eastman turned them over to the House committee as he continued to fight the release of others.Among the documents that Mr. Eastman turned over was a draft memo written for Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, that recommended that Vice President Mike Pence reject electors from contested states in his role overseeing the certification by Congress of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6.In their filing, Mr. Eastman’s lawyers wrote that their client disagreed with Judge Carter’s conclusion that he had undermined democracy, arguing that Mr. Eastman truly believed the election was stolen. The filing cited the work of conservative media figures — including the new film “2000 Mules” by Dinesh D’Souza, which fact checkers have described as misleading — as evidence that widespread fraud occurred in the election.“If, as seemed clear to Dr. Eastman and his client at the time, there was illegality and fraud in the election of sufficient magnitude to have altered the outcome of the election, then far from ‘undermining’ democracy, Dr. Eastman’s actions and advice must be seen for what they were — a legitimate attempt to prevent a stolen election,” Mr. Eastman’s lawyers wrote. “Perhaps Dr. Eastman was wrong about that. But even if he was, being wrong about factual claims is not and never has been criminal.”They added, “Dr. Eastman’s position remains that his legal theories, controversial though they may have been, were not unlawful.”In the filing, Mr. Eastman said he began working for Mr. Trump two months before the 2020 election at the invitation of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the Jan. 6 committee said “promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress” and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “‘find’ enough votes to reverse his loss there.”Mr. Eastman, Ms. Mitchell and others began preparing to fight the election results well before Election Day, but the effort “kicked into high gear” on Nov. 7 — four days after the election — when Mr. Eastman met with Mr. Trump’s campaign team in Philadelphia to assist with the preparation of an election challenge, the filing said.In deciding in March that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had “more likely than not” broken the law, Judge Carter noted that Mr. Trump had facilitated two meetings involving Mr. Eastman in the days before Jan. 6 that were “explicitly tied to persuading Vice President Pence to disrupt the joint session of Congress.”At the first meeting, on Jan. 4, Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman invited Mr. Pence and two of his top aides, Greg Jacob and Marc Short, to the Oval Office. There, Judge Carter wrote, Mr. Eastman “presented his plan to Vice President Pence, focusing on either rejecting electors or delaying the count.”That meeting was followed by another, Judge Carter wrote, on Jan. 5, during which Mr. Eastman sought again to persuade Mr. Jacob to go along with the scheme. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      When Will We Have Results in Ohio and Indiana’s Primary Contests?

      by

      As we have said before, predicting the timing of election results is not an exact science. It can be downright messy. And surely, every election night is different.Many factors can contribute to how late, or how early, results are reported: when polls close, what time election officials can start tabulating absentee ballots and how close races are, to name a few.For the marquee races in Ohio, like the closely watched U.S. Senate primary, the secretary of state said it would begin posting unofficial results on its website at 8 p.m. Eastern time, half an hour after voting ends. In 2020, about half the vote had been counted by 8:30 p.m. in Ohio, said Stephen Ohlemacher, the election decision editor for The Associated Press.Absentee ballots can’t be tabulated in Ohio until the polls close, and are then counted first, according to Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the secretary of state. As of Friday, about 162,000 ballots had already been cast in Ohio through the mail or via early, in-person voting, which ended on Monday, according to The A.P. In 2018, there were about 280,000 ballots cast before the primary in Ohio, which The A.P. estimated was 17 percent of the total vote.Results for U.S. House races in Ohio will appear on county-level board of election websites before the secretary of state’s, putting the onus on the candidates, political parties and news media to tally results for each county in a congressional district. The secretary of state’s office cited Ohio’s back-and-forth on redrawing congressional maps as the root cause of the delay in updating their website.Indiana expects to start posting results on the secretary of state’s website shortly after polls close — which is 6 p.m. local time, whether in the part of the state that is in the Eastern time zone or in the Central time zone. Election officials in the state can begin counting absentee ballots on the day of an election, but cannot post any results until after the polls close.As of Monday morning, 146,365 ballots had been cast statewide, both through the mail and early, in-person voting, which ended on Monday in Indiana, according to The A.P. The total ballots cast in the 2018 primary was 173,000. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      New York Democrats Make Last-Ditch Bid to Save New Congressional Maps

      by

      The state’s highest court heard arguments on Tuesday on whether to uphold earlier rulings that voided maps drawn by Democrats as illegal gerrymanders.New York Democrats made a last-ditch appeal to the state’s highest court on Tuesday to overturn a pair of lower-court rulings and salvage newly drawn congressional districts that overwhelmingly favor their party.In oral arguments before the New York State Court of Appeals, lawyers for the governor and top legislative leaders said that Republicans challenging the lines had fallen short of proving that the state’s new congressional map violated a state ban on gerrymandering.But the arguments turned tense at times, especially as several members of the seven-judge panel scrutinized the constitutionality of the mapmaking process itself.Voters created a new redistricting commission in 2014 to help wean politics from the mapmaking process, at the same time that they outlawed gerrymandering. But after the commission’s efforts broke down this winter, the Democratic-led Legislature quickly shunted aside the commission’s proposals in favor of more politically favorable maps.“Isn’t that evidence of a purpose to gerrymander?” Judge Michael Garcia asked lawyers for the Democrats.The court’s decision, expected as soon as Wednesday, could have far-reaching implications for New York and the rest of the country.A bare-knuckle political fight over representation and power lies beneath the complex legal arguments. National Democrats are relying on New York to help offset Republican redistricting gains in other states. Without it, their path to maintaining the House of Representatives in Washington could become considerably more difficult.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.The congressional map, approved by Democratic supermajorities in February, threatens to cut the state’s eight-member Republican House delegation in half and creates three new Democratic friendly seats on Long Island, Staten Island and in central New York. The map, which favors Democrats 22 to four, shores up several swing districts that Democrats hold now with more left-leaning voters.But an Appeals Court ruling could also determine the future of the 2014 reforms to the redistricting process, which takes place once a decade. If the court upholds the maps and the process behind them, its ruling could effectively neuter the redistricting commission after just one cycle of activity and would set a high bar to prove maps are partisan gerrymanders.“It’s a total disregard for the Constitution and what the voters chose in 2014 as a process to try to improve the way the lines were drawn,” Laura Ladd Bierman, executive director of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of New York State, said of the Legislature’s actions. “That’s what just makes me so frustrated: They just seem to have no regard for what the public wanted.”Ms. Bierman’s group has submitted an amicus brief in the case siding with Republicans to argue that the courts should strike down the maps and draw new ones using a special master.The Court of Appeals judges, all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors, appeared to be wrestling with how to balance the interests of the voters, the longstanding right of the Legislature to set district lines and more pragmatic questions about how and when this year’s critical midterm elections should proceed.The court has traditionally shown deference to state lawmakers to set boundaries that they feel are appropriate. But the questions this time were particularly thorny because the case — Harkenrider v. Hochul — is the first time that the courts have tested the 2014 constitutional changes.The challengers, New York voters backed by national Republicans, have argued that the mapmaking power should have gone directly to the courts, not the Legislature, when the commission collapsed this winter. Instead, they contend, Democrats hijacked the process and drew lines expertly devised to knock out Republicans.The commission violated the law, the Republican lawyer, Misha Tseytlin, said, “but then the Legislature attempted to take a step that it had no legal authority to take.”Democrats rejected both claims. They maintain that the commission was an advisory body whose maps required lawmakers’ approval to become law. And they defended their congressional map as a good-faith effort to balance competing requirements to preserve the cores of existing districts and communities of interest — which includes racial and ethnic groups — while achieving maximum compactness and adjusting for population shifts that generally benefit Democrats.“Maybe the petitioners would have drawn the map a little differently, maybe someone from a think tank or the editorial board of a newspaper would have drawn these maps differently, or somebody on Twitter,” said Craig R. Bucki, a lawyer for State Assembly Democrats. “But the fact is they are not the Legislature, and they are not elected by the people, and that’s why all these maps should be upheld.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Meadows Was Warned Jan. 6 Could Turn Violent, House Panel Says

      by

      The committee investigating the attack also said in a filing that the former White House chief of staff proceeded with a plan for “alternate electors” despite being told it wasn’t legally sound.WASHINGTON — Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with a rally anyway, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack alleged in a Friday night court filing.In the 248-page filing, lawyers for the committee highlighted the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide in Mr. Meadows’s office, who revealed new details about the events that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob.“I know that there were concerns brought forward to Mr. Meadows,” Ms. Hutchinson told investigators at a deposition on March 7, adding: “I know that people had brought information forward to him that had indicated that there could be violence on the 6th. But, again, I’m not sure if he — what he did with that information.”Ms. Hutchinson — who testified twice before the panel in closed-door interviews in February and March — said Anthony M. Ornato, the former White House chief of operations, told Mr. Meadows that “we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th. And Mr. Meadows said: All right. Let’s talk about it.”“But despite this and other warnings, President Trump urged the attendees at the January 6th rally to march to the Capitol to ‘take back your country,’” Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, wrote in the filing.Read the Jan. 6 Committee’s Filing in Its Lawsuit With Mark MeadowsThe committee alleged that Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that an effort to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with plans to hold a rally in Washington anyway.Read Document 248 pagesThe committee put forward the evidence Friday to try to persuade a federal judge in Washington to throw out Mr. Meadows’s suit against the panel. Mr. Meadows is trying to block the committee’s subpoenas, which he called “overly broad and unduly burdensome,” including one sent to Verizon for his phone and text data.In response, the committee laid out numerous ways its lawyers say Mr. Meadows was deeply involved in the effort to the overturn the 2020 election. Those included his work furthering a scheme to direct certain battleground states to put forward pro-Trump electors even though their voters had chosen Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a pressure campaign in Georgia and other states to try to change the election outcome.Citing Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, the panel said it had evidence “that Mr. Meadows and certain congressmen were advised by White House counsel that efforts to generate false certificates did not comply with the law.”Ms. Hutchinson told investigators that she heard lawyers from the White House Counsel’s Office say the plan for alternate electors was not “legally sound,” according to the filing.“The select committee’s filing today urges the court to reject Mark Meadows’s baseless claims and put an end to his obstruction of our investigation,” the leaders of the committee, Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said in a statement. “Mr. Meadows is hiding behind broad claims of executive privilege even though much of the information we’re seeking couldn’t possibly be covered by privilege and courts have rejected similar claims because the committee’s interest in getting to the truth is so compelling.”A lawyer for Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The committee issued a subpoena in November to Ms. Hutchinson, who served as special assistant to the president for legislative affairs and was at the White House on Jan. 6 and with Mr. Trump when he spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally that day. She also reached out directly to Georgia officials about Mr. Meadows’s trip to that state.She was present for key meetings and discussions in the White House in the buildup to Jan. 6.Ms. Hutchinson also told the panel that top White House lawyers had threatened to resign over extreme plans to seize voting machines, and that had helped persuade Mr. Meadows to back off that plan. “Once it became clear that there would be mass resignations, including lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, including some of the staff that Mr. Meadows worked closely with, you know, I know that did factor into his thinking,” she said.And she said members of Congress had urged a crowd to amass at the Capitol on Jan. 6.One investigator asked her whether Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is now the head of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, supported “the idea of sending people to the Capitol on January the 6th.”“He did,” Ms. Hutchinson replied.The panel also emphasized how personally involved Mr. Meadows was in attempts to pressure Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, over Mr. Trump’s loss there — so much so that Mr. Raffensperger ducked and ignored his phone calls, viewing them as improper.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More