Did They Try to Replace Iglesias with Rogers?

by emptywheel

McClatchy has a story that shows that Pat Rogers, one of the key players behind the firing of David Iglesias, was an officer in the voter fraud group American Center for Voting Rights.

Iglesias said he only recently learned of Rogers� involvement as secretary of the non-profit American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund - an activist group that defended tighter voter identification requirements in court against charges that they were designed to hamper voting by poor minorities.

Rogers, a former general counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party and a candidate to replace Iglesias, is among a number of well-connected GOP partisans whose work with the legislative fund and a sister group played a significant role in the party�s effort to retain control of Congress in the 2006 election.

That strategy, which presidential adviser Karl Rove alluded to in an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougher ID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely to vote Democratic.

This is the Thor Hearne group generating false concern over non-existent voter fraud cases.

As McClatchy pointed out in its article and I've been pointing out for some time, Rogers is or was also a candidate to replace Iglesias. We know Domenici has supported Rogers' candidacy for some time.

Yet we don't yet have statements--from Domenici or from the White House--who was behind Rogers' candidacy to be USA. Isn't it about time we tried to find out whether Iglesias  was fired specifically to free up a place for a vote fraud hack? You know, kind of like what happened in Missouri? Because it would make it a lot easier to show the pattern behind these firings.

Comments

[freepatriot]

Uhm, I think we can already PROVE a pattern of activity that would hurdle the seven steps required to prove a RICO violation

Isn't it about time we tried to find out whether Iglesias was fired specifically to free up a place for a vote fraud hack? You know, kind of like what happened in Missouri? Because it would make it a lot easier to show the pattern behind these firings.

If we get this evidence, then the word we would be looking for is "IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE"

and that would kinda, you know, destroy the repuglican party forever ...

where do we start digging ...

we'll teach kkkarl rove about hardball, we'll put that fucker in prison forever, and eviserate his political party too. Tell me again about that "Permenent repuglican majority"

mess with the bull, and ya get the horn

[freepatriot]

prevue is your friend

[freepatriot]

not mine

[Mimikatz]

off

[P J Evans]

freepatriot, messing with the bull can also get your chest stove in. Just as permanent and not nearly as messy as being got by a horn.

[lolo]

It is starting to sound like some of the firings were a backlash from Karl for screwing up his math and reality of an '06 win. Can you imagine all the losers calling him up screaming "WHAT HAPPENED??" His reputation as an election winning guru, down the drain. EW, I have been wondering about Margaret Chiarra. She has avoided the limelite and hasn't made any statements. Have you heard anything? Yes, it is time to dig into the voting angle especially involving the missing emails and the RNC servers. That is the root to all of their evil. We need to find out what happened in Ohio '04. It is all there just waiting to be discovered and when it is finally out there for all of us to see they will be toast!

[Paul in LA]

It would be good if you would OCCASIONALLY include the HAVA voter registration lists, which are required for every state, and which are commonly being used to disenfranchize minorities.

(I'd bold HAVA VOTER REGISTRATION LISTS, but it seems Typepad has already done that).

[jthomas]

Jason Leopold over at Truthout first reported on this via an on camera interview with Iglesias one month ago. Watch the video. Iglesias goes into detail about Rogers. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/053007J.shtml

Looks like McClatchy was following leopold

[pol]

Great tip, jthomas.

[Albert Fall]

Karl thought he was keeping the Senate with VA and MO.

Macaca did in VA and the scam didn't generate a win in MO.

Thus dies "the math."

[whenwego]

EW:
The USA stories are seperate stories linked at the top. Consider the drama of the last day of Carol Lam. Consider Rogers versus Iglasias. Consider the Griffin thread. And now consider the USAs who did NOT have to resign: what kind of water did they carry for Rove?

[emptywheel]

Um, jthomas

I don't want to get back into the Leopold wars here, but I will.

No--Iglesias offered up the detail about Rogers--and Leopold didn't make the competent follow-up. I appreciate that you like him and--despite all his proven mistakes, you like his work on Plame. But I find the former to be unimpressive and the latter to be apparently proven wrong by any standard.

So I'd really appreciate you not pimping Leopold on my site. I find your pimping his work a waste of my bandwidth, and will treat it accordingly.

[lolo]

It is starting to sound like some of the firings were a backlash from Karl for screwing up his math and reality of an '06 win. Can you imagine all the losers calling him up screaming "WHAT HAPPENED??" His reputation as an election winning guru, down the drain. EW, I have been wondering about Margaret Chiarra. She has avoided the limelite and hasn't made any statements. Have you heard anything? Yes, it is time to dig into the voting angle especially involving the missing emails and the RNC servers. That is the root to all of their evil. We need to find out what happened in Ohio '04. It is all there just waiting to be discovered and when it is finally out there for all of us to see they will be toast!

[ab initio]

Kudos to Sen.Leahy! That was an impressive interview on MTP.

A few statements that I really liked:

"...I don’t want us to ever go back to the situation that we had 30 years ago when we put into place this FISA court, as you called it, where they were wiretapping somebody who disagreed with the government on the Vietnam war. In this case, somebody disagrees with the administration on the Iraq war, under their broad views, you could just go in and wiretap them. This, this is America. This is not a, this is not a dictatorship."

"...They have taken the attitude at the, at the White House that somehow they’re above the law. They—if they make a decision that there’s something they want to do, nobody should question them on it. The vice president’s even been quoted as saying, “The courts can’t question it. The Congress can’t question it.” That’s a Nixonian attitude, and it’s wrong.

In America, no one is above the law. The president and the vice president are not above the law any more than you and I are. And it is unfortunate they’ve taken this attitude because what it does it taints everything else."

Yeah, I realize that Nancy Pelosi believes that impeachment is not worth it. However, I can hope that a Leahy provides the "record" that Nancy is looking for and that she can be persuaded that it is worth it for Conyers to start impeachment proceedings.

[Richard L. Hasen said]

The Fraudulent Fraud Squad

The incredible, disappearing American Center for Voting Rights.

http://slate.com/id/2166589

With no notice and little comment, the American Center for Voting Rights ( ACVR ) — the only prominent nongovernmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem, a problem warranting strict rules such as voter-ID laws — simply stopped appearing at government panels and conferences. Its Web domain name has suddenly expired, its reports are all gone ( except where they have been preserved by its opponents ), and its general counsel, Mark "Thor" Hearne, has cleansed his résumé of affiliation with the group. Hearne won't speak to the press about ACVR's demise. No other group has taken up the "voter fraud" mantra.

The death of ACVR says a lot about the Republican strategy of raising voter fraud as a crisis in American elections. Presidential adviser Karl Rove and his allies, who have been ghostbusting illusory dead and fictional voters since the contested 2000 election, apparently mounted a two-pronged attack. One part of that attack, at the heart of the current Justice Department scandals, involved getting the DoJ and various US attorneys in battleground states to vigorously prosecute cases of voter fraud. That prong has failed. After exhaustive effort, the Department of Justice discovered virtually no polling-place voter fraud, and its efforts to fire the US attorneys in battleground states who did not push the voter-fraud line enough has backfired. Even if Attorney General Gonzales declines to resign his position, his reputation has been irreparably damaged.

But the second prong of this attack may have proven more successful. This involved using ACVR to give "think tank" academic cachet to the unproven idea that voter fraud is a major problem in elections. That cachet would be used to support the passage of onerous voter-identification laws that depress turnout among the poor, minorities, and the elderly—groups more likely to vote Democratic. Where the Bush administration may have failed to nail illegal voters, the effort to suppress minority voting has borne more fruit, as more states pass these laws, and courts begin to uphold them in the name of beating back waves of largely imaginary voter fraud.

[lolo]

Hey how did that double post of mine happen? There was a poster at Jeralyn's pimping for
Leopold too. How sad. That reminds me, EW you wrote about Rogers back in March and Leopold interviewed Iglesias in May. Sorry jthomas, as usual EW wins. Teeheehee.

[thought u might want to no]

Hush-Hush: Rove's Security Clearance Renewal

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070101036.html?hpid%3Dsec-politics&sub=AR

Should White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove be privy to the nation's most sensitive secrets? Did he break trust with President Bush and the nation when he told syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak about Valerie Plame's classified job with the CIA? Did he further erode that trust in 2003 when he told then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan that, as McClellan put it, there was "no truth" to rumors that he played a role in the disclosure of Plame's identity?

Rove, of course, was investigated by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case but was never charged. His security clearance was renewed after a reinvestigation in late 2006, which has puzzled Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

In a letter sent last week to White House Counsel Fred F. Fielding, Waxman alleged that Rove's actions amounted to a violation of presidential guidelines that say "deliberate or negligent disclosure" of classified information can disqualify a staffer from future access to such material. Also being less than forthcoming, even about unintentional breaches, can be cause for revoking a security clearance.

"Under these standards, it is hard to see how Mr. Rove would qualify for renewal of his security clearance," Waxman wrote.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he could not discuss details but that Rove's "clearance was appropriately renewed as part of the regular process that occurs every five years."

[lolo]

Hey how did that double post of mine happen? There was a poster at Jeralyn's pimping for
Leopold too. How sad. That reminds me, EW you wrote about Rogers back in March and Leopold interviewed Iglesias in May. Sorry jthomas, as usual EW wins. Teeheehee.

[Neil]

Progress! When will the (rest of the?) MSM pick this up? Is it apparent this policy means laws have been broken?

Was campaigning against voter fraud a Republican ploy?

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers | link

[...] McClatchy Newspapers has found that this election strategy was active on at least three fronts:

- Tax-exempt groups such as the American Center and the Lawyers Association were deployed in battleground states to press for restrictive ID laws and oversee balloting.

- The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division turned traditional voting rights enforcement upside down with legal policies that narrowed rather than protected the rights of minorities.

- The White House and the Justice Department encouraged selected U.S. attorneys to bring voter fraud prosecutions, despite studies showing that election fraud isn't a widespread problem.

Nowhere was the breadth of these actions more obvious than at the American Center for Voting Rights and its legislative fund.

Public records show that the two nonprofits were active in at least nine states. They hired high-priced lawyers to write court briefs, issued news releases declaring key cities "hot spots" for voter fraud and hired lobbyists in Missouri and Pennsylvania to win support for photo ID laws. In each of those states, the center released polls that it claimed found that minorities prefer tougher ID laws.

[looseheadprop]

I thik this is angle that bears pursuing.

NY is not a swing state. You would think there would be no reason whatsoever for Karl to try to put his finger in scales here. But watch this:

When Dave Kelley was USA SDNY he and the USA EDNY put up a hotline each election cycle for people to call in election fraud problems. Not voter fraud, election fraud--you know, folks being disenfranchiesed?

Kelley leaves, Chertoff protege Mike Garcia comes in, suddenly no hotline.

Worse, DOJ starts suing the State of NY to take back the HAVA grant money b/c NYS won't cave in and but paperless voting machine from Diebold (I am oversimplifying hugley here)

Thing is NYS has always been the "gold Standard" for how to cnduct an election. So whatever NYS does will become the "ceiling" for standards nationwide.

And DOJ has tried to move heaven and earth to force NYS ro degrade it procedures: Trasparency proceddures, machine testing procedures, audit and recount procedures, recordkeeping procedures, voter list maintaince proceedures.

DOJ has served supeones on both Boards of election on Long Island looking for "fraudulent voters" Most of the names on those subpeonas were Hispanic. I don't know wheter other counties in NYS have also been served, but it would not surprise me if they were.

People keep saying that we should look into what folks had to do to keep their jobs? Well, it seems at the very leaast, you don't complain when Main Justice come into your turf and brings crazy lawsuits that don't pass the blush test. I guess, you give up existing programs to prevent disenfranchisement.

[albert fall]

Doesn't ACVR's disappearance strike anyone else as being evidence of a cover-up?

How can an organization that is moving with the apparent support of the Republican party and the administration suddenly vanish, unless those entities really need it to vanish (no one to send a subpoena to, no one to order not to destroy records).

[jthomas]

what a fucking cunt

[jthomas]

EW, can you lick your own balls? Just curious

[tekel]

lhp: that's an interesting find. I'd love nothing more than to find a good link from the DOJ vote caging strategy to the Diebold election-stealing machines, and it sounds like New York might be a place to start looking.

[Neil]

jthomas likes the naughty bits, cunts and balls. how curious.

[...]

obviously he agrees with ew but isn't man enough to admit it.

[Boo Radley]

jthomas = Jason Leopold

[P J Evans]

albert, that's an interesting thought. If they had support (and I think they must have) from the GOP, there ought to be evidence of it somewhere, if only in the account books. (Unless the GOP runs its petty cash the way JoeL does, with no records!)

[mainsailset]

Via the new GroupNewsBlog (Steve G would be proud) I found a piece by Lowermanhattanite
with a joke at the bottom, which I'd like to send along to jthomas above.

"What did the 5 fingers say to the wingnut fuckers?

SLAP!!

http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2007/07/in-immortal-words-of-dave-chappellerick.html

jthomas you may not be a wingnut, but your comment deserves a slap.

[P J Evans]

This just in:

The Appeals Court ruled against Libby!

[*xyz]

The disappearance of the American Center for Voting Rights may turn out to be a very big story.

It certainly has all the earmarks of a whitewash - and this was no minor organization.

Is there any precedent for a think tank of this size and prominence disappearing so quickly and with no official announcement or explanation?

What are the members of their leadership doing now - have they moved into the government or over to other think tanks? What did they do with their records? What is their purported rationale for shutting down operations so quickly? What has happened to their assets?

These would be good questions for a Congressional committee to ask. Along with many, many questions about the nature of their communications with Rove, Cheney, Gonzeles and their respective staffs (along with questions about whether such communications occurred via email to and from RNC email addresses).

[mamayaga]

For those of you playing along at home who may not be aware of the history, Jason Leopold has a history of obnoxious sockpuppetry on this site, thus our hostess' uncharacteristically curt response to Leopold-shill "jthomas" and the latter's characteristically obscene rejoinder. As Boo Radley points out, there's a good chance that "jthomas" is in fact Leopold himself.

Back on topic: It just occurred to me that the prime reason the Repugs decided to hype immigration the past couple of years was not to arouse the xenophobic passions of their base, but to develop a conventional wisdom that illegal Messicans are voting in large numbers. Sort of like creating the urban legend to shore up the fake think tanks. It wasn't cohesion in the base they were after, it was vote suppression.

[John Lopresti]

A desultory commenter here, I welcome RLHasen's expert contribution, above. Readers may recall Hasen's May 18, 2007 important article in Slate discussing ACVR. In a funny counterpoint, an online journalist whose approach is very different from Hasen's law and academic vantage, Brad Friedman, too, had joined his voice to the clamor about ACVR. At the moment I have little time to find the early chronicling of the precise moment when, after ACVR's appearance at a government hearing, the entity disbanded; yet, Brad's blog reported June 7, 2007 on some of ACVR's Hearne's postmortems on the demise of that now not so respected group, there.

[jthomas]

Oh please.

Here's the thing about Ms. Wheeler in all of her self-righteous glory. She sits behind a keyboard and acts as the quintessential expert whereas Leopold actually gets off his ass and interviewed Iglesias and that speaks volumes.

And last time I checked this is a free country so I can come on "your site" whenever I feel like it and discuss or "pimp" whomever I choose to whether you like it or not