“Trump Administration To Fight Order To Give Documents To Democratic Voter Fraud Commissioner”

Sam Levine:

The Trump administration says it will fight a court order telling its voter fraud commission to hand over communications and documents to a Democratic member who sued the panel and alleged he was being illegally excluded from its decision-making process.

D.C. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sided with the commissioner, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, on Dec. 22. She ordered the panel to give Dunlap documents, including a draft of the commission’s controversial request for state voter data and communication relating to the planning of the panel’s Sept. 12 meeting in New Hampshire.

But President Donald Trump suddenly dissolved the commission on Wednesday, and Justice Department lawyers said Friday in a letter that they would ask Kollar-Kotelly to reconsider her order because the panel no longer exists….

“As you know, of course, the Commission has been terminated as of January 3, 2018, and your client is, therefore, no longer a Commission member,” they wrote to Dunlap’s lawyers. “The Commission’s activities ceased without it ever issuing any report or recommendation, and therefore there is no prospect of future injury, much less future irreparable injury.”…

The Justice Department attorneys also indicated in their letter that the voter data collected by the commission “is not being transferred or utilized.” That comment is at odds with the White House, which has said the Department of Homeland Security would take up the panel’s “preliminary findings.”

MORE in the Portland Press Herald.

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