Tag: freedomworks
Discredited Trump Lawyer Will Run Anti-Voter Initiatives For GOP

Discredited Trump Lawyer Will Run Anti-Voter Initiatives For GOP

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

A conservative activist and former Donald Trump lawyer is to head up two newly announced conservative initiatives aimed at suppressing voting.

Cleta Mitchell, who worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, will lead the two new efforts.

The conservative activist group FreedomWorks announced on Sunday that Mitchell would chair its National Election Protection Initiative.

FreedomWorks told Newsmax, "The integrity of our elections are the bedrock of our Republic and confidence in these institutions is on the decline." Conservatives often use the term "election integrity" as the rationalization for their efforts to suppress votes, particularly of ethnic minorities and other demographics that historically vote Democratic.

Newsmax, in what it said was an exclusive report on FreedomWorks' new effort, said Mitchell would "lead a program focused on election integrity education, training, and deployment, including registering voters, recruiting and training local activists, working as election officials, monitoring election procedures, and identifying needed changes and reforms in election administration and law."

On Tuesday, the Conservative Partnership Institute announced that Mitchell would be leading its Election Integrity Coalition. Former Sen. Jim DeMint, the chair of the institute, of which former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows is a senior partner, told the Washington Examiner, "Washington elites are trying to silence and bully conservatives with astounding brazenness, which Cleta has witnessed first hand, and now through her work at CPI, she will teach the conservative movement how to fight back against this cancel culture." The Examiner reported that the coalition is among a number of groups gearing up to fight against H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2021, House Democrats' proposed bill that would expand voting rights across the country.

Mitchell is a longtime conservative activist who has been a part of many right-wing organizations and Republican campaigns. She has worked in the past for former Trump campaign manager and adviser Steve Bannon, representing his nonprofit organization.

Most recently, she was a lawyer for Trump's reelection campaign.

In that capacity, Mitchell promoted the same fraudulent conspiracy theories about the election as her client did.

"We're already double checking and finding dead people having voted. We're going to be finding people have voted across state lines, voted in two states, illegal voting, non-citizens and that sort of thing," Mitchell said after the election had been called for President Joe Biden.

Mitchell echoed Trump in claiming Biden's win in Georgia was tainted, alleging that the recount in the state was a "total sham" and "A FAKE!"

"Happy to be considered a nut job because I believe in the rule of law," she tweeted.

As part of the Trump campaign's efforts to overturn Biden's win, Mitchell was on the January 2 phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to get him to throw out Democratic votes and "find" enough votes for him to give him the win.

After her role in that process became the subject of news reports, she was criticized by her employer, the Washington law firm Foley & Lardner: "We are aware of, and are concerned by, Ms. Mitchell's participation in the January 2 conference call," the firm said in a statement on January 5. A day later, it was announced that Mitchell had resigned from the firm.

It wasn't her first time promoting election conspiracy theories.

In 2010, as the lawyer for Sharron Angle's campaign for the Senate seat held by Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, Mitchell released a fundraising letter alleging that Reid "intends to steal the election" and accusing him of offering "free food" in exchange for votes.

A spokesperson for Nevada's Election Integrity Task Force told Talking Points Memo then that it had not received a single report of voter fraud from anyone who had experienced it personally.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Tea Party PAC Funding Increases While Candidates Falter

Tea Party PAC Funding Increases While Candidates Falter

The Tea Party’s really been struggling this primary season. They’ve failed to unseat a single Republican incumbent in the Senate primaries, and haven’t won many victories in House primaries, either. But, as Patricia Murphy points out in The Daily Beast, fundraising for Tea Party SuperPACs continues to increase.

The right’s top three Washington-based SuperPACS — the Senate Conservatives Fund, Club for Growth Action, and FreedomWorks For America — have recently experienced some of their best fundraising months, according to the Federal Elections Commission.

Club for Growth raised the most money, with a 73 percent increase in fundraising from May to June. The SuperPAC spent more than $3 million on its failed attempt to defeat Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) in his June primary.

FreedomWorks had its third best month of the election cycle in June, even though its favored candidate, Matt Bevin, had just lost his primary to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). And the Senate Conservatives Fund saw its funding increase by 46 percent in June, even though over 65 percent of its spending went towards failed Senate candidates.

As Murphy points out, these SuperPACs had nothing to do with the biggest primary upset of the season, Dave Brat’s victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). But she notes that it doesn’t matter who wins or loses.

“The fact that McConnell had to think about his primary for even a minute, and then adjust his agenda in Washington while he did it, made anyone who gave Matt Bevin $25 feel pretty good,” she writes.

It’s important to remember that these organizations aren’t just funded by $25 donations. There are also people and corporations with deep pockets who are very committed to seeing the Tea Party succeed.

But even though they haven’t had the best election season, it’s not hard to see why the SuperPACs are doing well. It makes sense that fundraising would spike in June, when contested primaries were approaching. And while a June Gallup poll showed that 24 percent of Americans still support the Tea Party, a Gallup poll released on Tuesday finds that only 13 percent of Americans approve of Congress. In other words, there are plenty of voters who are ready for an insurgency.

A similar fundraising spike occurred in 2012, except from July to August instead of May to June. The Senate Conservatives Fund’s fundraising increased by 87 percent from July to August, and FreedomWorks for America had a 91 percent spike from July to August.

It’s important to note that all of this money doesn’t go to campaigns. For example, in the 2014 election cycle, Club for Growth Action spent $356,400 on fundraising, $79,200 on strategy and research, $17,450 on actual campaign expenses, and $5,113 on contributions to committees. The Senate Conservatives Fund, however spent more on contributions to actual candidates than it did on fundraising or research.

Other Tea Party groups, such as the Tea Party Express, have been criticized in the past for putting their money toward fundraising and consulting fees, instead of giving it to campaigns.

AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan

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Conservative Groups Search For Fraud In Mississippi Runoff

Conservative Groups Search For Fraud In Mississippi Runoff

Some conservatives have a problem with the fact that Democrats were the reason that Mississippi senator Thad Cochran beat Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel in the Mississippi Republican primary runoff — so they’re doing everything they can to call the results fraudulent.

True the Vote, a group that works to hunt down any evidence of voter fraud — even though it’s very rare — has filed suit with the state of Mississippi so the group can gain access to election records. True the Vote clearly leans Republican, and its directors also run King Street Patriots, a Tea Party group. True the Vote has also worked to stop the recall of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and supported the Florida voter purge. Its record of uncovering actual fraud is weak, at best.

The group claims that it already has evidence of voters who illegally voted in both the Democratic primary and the Republican runoff. Mississippi has an open primary system, but voters cannot vote in both elections.

“True the Vote has been inundated with reports from voters across Mississippi who are outraged to see the integrity of this election being undermined so that politicos can get back to business as usual. Enough is enough,” True the Vote president Catherine Engelbrecht said in a statement.

“This isn’t about personality, party, or politics. Senators come and go.” she continued. “What must withstand the test of time is the integrity of the process by which we elect our representatives and establish our government. No candidate or party should ever be allowed to twist election laws or subvert voters’ rights in the interest of political ambition.”

True the Vote cites the “unusual voter patterns” in the runoff as one of the reasons why there must have been voter fraud, as they don’t think Mississippi Democrats should have anything to do with electing Republican candidates.

Chris McDaniel is also doing what he can to emphasize that he would have won the election if Democrats weren’t involved. In an email to supporters, he wrote, “On June 24th, we won the Republican primary election. As you might have heard, we’re not quite done. We are in the process of trying to ensure a fair and accurate election took place on Tuesday.”

The McDaniel campaign is currently searching through election books in a futile attempt to find enough irregular votes to invalidate Cochran’s win. So far, they claim that they’ve found more than 3,300 suspicious votes after examining less than half of Mississippi’s counties.

The Cochran campaign dismissed these numbers. “Their numbers are wildly exaggerated,” Cochran campaign spokesman Jordan Russell told the Sun Herald. “For instance, in one county where they say they found 200 illegal votes, only 37 Democrats voted on June 3.”

But the McDaniel campaign’s strategy isn’t just to prove that there was voter fraud — it’s to create enough of a frenzy to force yet another runoff election.

“We don’t have to prove that we have 7,000 [invalid] votes … all there needs to be is enough doubt about the election, and we’re confident about that,” Noel Fritsch, McDaniel’s press aide, said to Fox News.

So conservative groups are trying their best to create that atmosphere of “doubt.” The Mississippi Tea Party says that it found at least 800 illegal votes in heavily Democratic Hinds County (where McDaniel’s campaign says it’s found 1,500 such votes).

Tea Party group FreedomWorks is calling on the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the Cochran campaign after RedState.com released an interview with a reverend who says that Cochran’s campaign paid him to give black voters $15 to vote for Cochran. However, the reverend was paid to do the interview, and the Cochran campaign called his allegations “baseless and false.”

Meanwhile, the far right’s vendetta against Cochran and Mississippi Democrats will likely serve to continue to alienate minority voters.

AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan

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Birchers, Not Birthers: Top Tea Party Organization Buddies Up With Old-School Conspiracy Theorists

Tea Party members like to argue that the movement is fiscally conservative but not socially conservative. They want to cut taxes, they say, but don’t care about gay marriage or affirmative action. But this is a tough argument to make when the Tea Party group long considered the least conservative turns out to be in bed with a group that thinks Eisenhower is a Communist for letting black and white kids go to school together.

FreedomWorks, the politically influential Tea Party organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, has tried to distance itself from social conservatism. A report from the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) found last year that it was the only major Tea Party faction that did not have a “birther” on its national staff. And Armey has denied that his organization includes any members of the John Birch Society, a group of rightwing extremists known for bigotry and paranoid conspiracy theories. He has even disparaged the Society, telling CBS News that “John Birch Society historically has had a good deal of people that have regretted them.”

But a new report from IREHR reveals that FreedomWorks is in bed with John Birch. It wasn’t always this way. For a while, Armey kept radical social conservatives out of his organization, which is why FreedomWorks had the second-smallest online following of all Tea Party groups last year. In January, it launched a new Tea Party social-networking site and gained over 70,000 new followers. Many of those new followers, of course, came from the John Birch Society.

And FreedomWorks didn’t merely turn a blind eye as their rolls swelled with Birchers. Staff members and website administrators actively recruited members of the Society, in many cases promoting Bircher events on the site’s front page. “In total,” the IREHR investigation found, “80 different JBS events were advertised on the FreedomWorks FreedomConnector site between the site launch and June 1, 2011.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights]