Tag: mccrae dowless
Report: Justice Department Probing North Carolina Election Fraud

Report: Justice Department Probing North Carolina Election Fraud

The troubles are not yet over for Republicans in North Carolina’s 9th District, where state election officials nullified the 2018 midterm results and called for a new election after finding evidence that the GOP congressional candidate’s campaign engaged in rampant election fraud.

In fact, the problems for those North Carolina Republicans may just be getting started — because federal investigators are now probing the fraud, a local North Carolina television station reportedon Monday.

A grand jury has been convened, according to the report, and the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section has now issued at least three subpoenas in the case.

Those who received subpoenas include:

  • The campaign of Mark Harris, the GOP nominee in the 2018 House race.
  • McCrae Dowless, the man accused of carrying out the election fraud for Harris’ campaign. Dowless was arrested at the end of February and indicted on multiple charges related to the election fraud, which involved illegally collecting absentee ballots and either altering them or discarding them.
  • The North Carolina State Board of Elections, which is required to produce “all documents related to the investigation of election irregularities affecting counties within the 9th Congressional District.” The NCSBOE conducted its own investigation of the fraud — which led to its decision to hold new elections — and thus would have documents and evidence relevant to federal investigators.

Republicans, for their part, have mostly been silent on their party’s election fraud.

And if they haven’t been silent, they’ve been twisting the facts of the case to blame the fraud on Democrats. Of course, Democrats had nothing to do with the fact that Republicans in North Carolina tried to steal an election.

In one instance, the state Republican Party even tried to raise money off the fraud.

Now, however, Republicans will have to campaign in a new election in the 9th District under a cloud of federal investigation. We’ll soon see how they’ll try to spin that.

 

This Week In Crazy: Persecuted Racists, Vote Thieves, And Matt Gaetz (Twice!)

This Week In Crazy: Persecuted Racists, Vote Thieves, And Matt Gaetz (Twice!)

Trump supporters are violated, Matt Gaetz exposes himself as a peeping Tom. And being racist isn’t racism if you employ at least one black person. Don’t adjust your computer screens. It’s This Week in Crazy!

5. Laura Loomer

Being outed as racists can be really hard on the financial security of Trump supporters, as Laura Loomer can say from experience. With less charisma than a sloth on downers, she whined: “People like myself and Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes and so many others are being de-platformed simply because we support President Trump.”

The Loom went on to say that she and fellow Frat Packers “inspired so many young people and red-pilled so many people to vote for President Trump.” Whoa there, careful what kinda pills you’re poppin’ at those white privilege parties.

Clearly still pilled, Loomer suggested the FBI raid Robert Mueller at six in the morning. She ended on a poignant note: “I think that the way Trump supporters are being treated in this country constitutes human rights violations.” Well, they didn’t violate Article 13, which protects your freedom to move.

4. McCrae Dowless and Mark Harris

McCrae and Marky, gettin’ cray-cray in Carolina. Mr. Dowless is a longtime GOP operative whose most recent task was working on Mark Harris’ 2018 Republican Congressional campaign. Harris was projected to win North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District with 900 votes. But officials discovered that Dowless illegally collected thousands of absentee ballots.

On Wednesday, Dowless was indicted on seven counts related to election fraud: “three counts of felonious obstruction of justice, two counts of conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice, and two counts of possession of absentee ballot.”

North Carolina plans to run a second election to determine the real victor. Sadly for Harris, he lied about his knowledge of any wrongdoing by Dowless to the State Board. This mendacity disqualified Harris from contention. To save face, he claimed he wasn’t going to run again due to medical issues and problems with “memory and recall.” Now, if only he could forget hiring Dowless…

 

3. Matt Gaetz

Not to be outdone by the latest Kardashian clan cheating scandal, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R_FL) went all Real Housewives on Michael Cohen. Gaetz ran the old Tweet-and-Delete, calling out the former Trump confidante:

 

Yeah, that’s tampering with a witness. Suffice to say, House Leader Nancy Pelosi was not impressed.

 

You know what happens when you poke Mama Bear? She threatens to set the House Ethics Committee on you. So, Gaetz handled the situation like a real tough guy and posted a tweet he has yet to delete…an apology to Pelosi.

2. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)

Now it’s time to discuss a Human Right’s violation just one step below the financial woes of Laura Loomer. We’re talking about the sexual abuse of migrant youth. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report on sexual abuse cases against minors in U.S. custody. Alarmingly, there’ve been over 4,500 cases filed since 2014.

The Trump rhetoric is that monsters are trying to come into our country. Yet, it seems the monsters are already here. Congress had an opportunity to respond, where Matt Gaetz (yes, that same Matt Gaetz) chimed in, “are people more likely going to be sexually abused on their way to our country by the cartel” than the would be by every U.S. government official “if every allegation were true?”

After this thought-provoking question, the ORR rep actually became the voice of reason in the room. Jonathon White, Manager of Unaccompanied Minors, dryly stated: “We don’t set ourselves the standard of just doing better than smugglers and traffickers.” Come to think of it, should we just set a This Week in Crazy record and give Matt Gaetz two rankings?

1. Mark Meadows

North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows deployed a little racism to prove that Donald Trump isn’t racist. Counteracting the claims of Michael Cohen, Meadows called upon Lynne Patton. Patton was a former event planner for the Trump family and is now a regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Oh, and she’s black!

Almost as if on auction, Patton stood stoically behind Meadows as he deployed the classic “I have a black friend” defense. He spoke up for Patton, who as a non-witness could not speak for herself: “She says that as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, that there is no way she would work for an individual who was racist.”

Yes, it’s clear the President takes HUD bigly serious:

 

Well, there you have it! Another clear-cut case of non-racism and another seven days until another Week In Crazy!

Official Uncovers Election Fraud Scheme In North Carolina

Official Uncovers Election Fraud Scheme In North Carolina

An investigation by North Carolina election officials has uncovered evidence of an illegal election-rigging scheme orchestrated by an operative working for Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris.

“The evidence will show that a coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme operated during the 2018 general election,” North Carolina State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Strach said in her opening statement of a Monday hearing to consider the evidence of election fraud.

Investigators have been looking into suspicious circumstances surrounding the race in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, where the most recent tally of results showed Harris ahead of Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes.

The state board of elections refused to certify those results and declare Harris as the winner after evidence emerged that McCrae Dowless, an operative hired by Harris, illegally collected mail-in ballots from voters in order to throw them away or alter them.

Harris won 61 percent of the mail-in vote in Bladen County, but Republicans made up only 19 percent of the voters who registered to vote by mail. NPR noted, “For Harris to have ended up with that 61 percent, he would have had to win every single Republican and unaffiliated voter and some registered Democrats as well.”

Strach said that the evidence — which includes testimony to investigators from 140 voters and 30 witnesses — shows Dowless paid people to pick up ballots, and took other actions designed to “obstruct the investigation and testimony provided at this hearing.”

One woman who testified in the hearing, Lisa Britt, signed her name as a witness to many of the ballots illegally turned in by Dowless. She said the Republican operative paid her between $150 and $175 for every 50 absentee ballot request forms she picked up, and said Dowless instructed her to fill in blanks for races on the ballots she took in.

After the election, Dowless reportedly told his hires not to admit to the illegal ballot collection. A typed-out form, which Britt said Dowless gave her, instructed ballot collectors to refuse to testify to investigators and to plead the Fifth if necessary.

The national Republican Party, led by Trump, has often baselessly accused Democrats of stealing elections. But the North Carolina case shows Republicans doing just that — at the same time as the national party pushes for laws to restrict voting to help them win elections.

Harris is also a Republican very much in the bigoted mold of Trump. Harris has said Muslims worship “the anti-Christ,” argued Jews and Muslims should convert to Christianity, and once delivered a sexist sermon that said women should be subservient.

Democrats in the House leadership have said they would refuse to seat Harris until the election fraud dispute is resolved.

As Republicans desperately tried to keep control of Congress in the 2018 midterms, they lied and pushed absurd fantasies about Democrats stealing elections.

When the dust settled, they still lost — and the only race actually stolen was a scheme put together by Republican operatives.

Published with permission of The American Independent. 

IMAGE: Mark Harris, Republican Congressional candidate in North Carolina’s 9th District.