Shane Goldmacher for the NYT: If Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, is convicted and then expelled from the United States Senate by early January, his replacement would be picked by Gov. Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey and an … Continue reading
Category Archives: chicanery
If true this is a big problem. … Continue reading
I have written this draft for SSRN (forthcoming, in the First Amendment Law Review’s symposium on “Distorting the News: ‘Fake News’ and Free Speech“). Here is the abstract: In a remarkably prescient article in a 1995 Yale Law Journal symposium … Continue reading
The Arizona Republic reports. … Continue reading
Sue Halpern NYRB. … Continue reading
Must-read Pam Fessler for NPR: When people showed up in several North Carolina precincts to vote last November, weird things started to happen with the electronic systems used to check them in. “Voters were going in and being told that … Continue reading
Paul von Hippel: President Trump has chartered a Commission on Election Integrity to investigate his claim that millions of voters, including undocumented immigrants, voted illegally in 2016. Although no evidence has been offered to support this allegation, it does evoke … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: An undercover operative for a conservative group likely violated rules against foreign campaign contributions while seeking to show Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was willing to break those same rules, the Federal Election Commission concluded. The FEC said in newly … Continue reading
KQED: Hackers successfully penetrated state-run online voter registration systems in 2016, triggering confusion and heated exchanges between voters, poll workers and poll watchers during California’s June 7 primary, Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin said Friday. “I think that pretty … Continue reading
Here. I think the severability point I raised last week is also important: that is, one can hold that the ban as applied to foreign principals (and particularly foreign governments) is constitutional even if the application to other foreign nationals … Continue reading
So reports Jonathan Shorman. Update: The district court’s opinion reviewing an earlier magistrate judge’s sanctions order against Kobach is here. Particularly noteworthy is the district court’s comment that SOS Kobach’s conduct “demonstrate a pattern” of misleading statements to the court … Continue reading
Uri Friedman for The Atlantic. … Continue reading
WaPo: Five protesters who disrupted a session of the U.S. Supreme Court by shouting disapproval of its rulings on campaign finance law were sentenced to either one or two weekends in prison Monday after losing a bid to overturn a … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: As I explain in a forthcoming law review article, Dark Money as a Political Sovereignty Problem, the federal sentencing guidelines already make a distinction between mere foreign nationals and members of foreign governments. The article states, “[t]he federal sentencing guidelines were … Continue reading
Palm Beach Post: Detectives with the State Attorney’s Office found clear-cut evidence of voter fraud in last year’s August election, with nearly two dozen people’s signatures forged on requests for absentee ballots. But prosecutors are dropping the case. Why? They can’t … Continue reading
CNN: There are two questions. One is: Was there coordination or collusion between the campaigns and these technology tools, which overwhelmed the search engine tools so that certain stories popped up at the top of your newsfeed. The second is, … Continue reading
Politico reports. … Continue reading
Quite a wow from Time: President Obama’s White House quietly produced a plan in October to counter a possible Election Day cyber attack that included extraordinary measures like sending armed federal law enforcement agents to polling places, mobilizing components of the military … Continue reading
NYR Daily: Similarly, bots can be programmed to search for certain keywords and particular users. That could account for why Russian bots were propagating anti-Clinton messages in places like Wisconsin: they might have simply been following the lead of other … Continue reading
One issue which has arisen over possible campaign finance charges against Donald Trump Jr. concerns whether the statute is substantially overbroad in violation of the First Amendment. Eugene Volokh makes the case here, and I argue against application of the … Continue reading
KCRW- To the Point: “Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop.” “Democrats want to impose Sharia law in Florida” These are just some of the headlines you may have seen online last fall. Among … Continue reading
WaPo: The former managers of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns are leading a new initiative called “Defending Digital Democracy” in the hopes of preventing a repeat of Russia’s 2016 election interference. Robby Mook, Clinton’s 2016 campaign chief, and … Continue reading
I have posted this new draft on SSRN (for the pre-APSA event, Protecting Electoral Security and Voting Rights: The 2016 U.S. Elections in Comparative Perspective). Here is the abstract: If the “voting wars” which have broken out across the post-2000 election … Continue reading
Andy Grewal makes a careful and good case that based on what we know, there might not be enough wilfulness on the part of Donald Trump Jr. for him to be criminally prosecuted. This is an important point and much … Continue reading
WSJ: To understand the scale of the hacking attempts against election systems in the 2016 presidential election, consider South Carolina. On Election Day alone, there were nearly 150,000 attempts to penetrate the state’s voter-registration system, according to a postelection report by the … Continue reading
Former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon in WaPo: We now know that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a comprehensive effort to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. This mission involved the cybertheft and strategic publication of politically sensitive emails, the placement and … Continue reading
Statement of reasons: The specter of any foreign government meddling in U.S. elections is an issue that we, like all Americans, take very seriously. Contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals in connection with U.S. elections are prohibited by the Federal … Continue reading
AP reports. Update: The updated version of the AP story now reads: In his first public interview about the meeting, Akhmetshin said he accompanied Veselnitskaya to Trump Tower where they met an interpreter who participated in the meeting. He said … Continue reading
Bob Bauer at Just Security. … Continue reading
Dan Tokaji at Just Security. … Continue reading
New Ned Foley. … Continue reading
Greg Sargent: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which oversees House races, has issued a formal request to its Republican counterpart, asking it to join in showing a “united front” and creating a “joint plan” against any Russian efforts to undermine … Continue reading
Ken Doyle reports for Bloomberg BNA. … Continue reading
Reuters: Trump Jr. eagerly agreed to meet the woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father’s presidential election campaign, according … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: Get ready for the latest defense for Donald Trump Jr.’s actions: He had a First Amendment right to collude with the Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. This defense, which has been advanced … Continue reading
Ari Berman writes for The Nation. … Continue reading
Jacob Gershman and Nicole Hong for the WSJ: That Mr. Trump Jr. came away empty-handed may be a mitigating factor, but as a defense, it is limited. Soliciting a foreign campaign contribution can be illegal even if the donation doesn’t … Continue reading
To read the DOJ complaint filed yesterday, click here. To read the FEC complaint filed yesterday, click here. To view the release online, click here. … Continue reading
TPM reports. … Continue reading
As I indicated in a blog post the other day, I think the foreign solicitation and coordination claims are credible. The two big questions are knowledge it was a foreign source (now credible if last night’s New York Times story … Continue reading
Following up on my earlier post about whether Trump Jr.’s revelations of the meeting with a Russian operative who was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton could violate the law on soliciting foreign contributions, Bob Bauer has this must-read: Of course, … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: The Federal Election Commission may be severely constrained in what it can or will do to combat foreign influence in U.S. elections, a new analysis posted on the agency’s website suggests. The commissioners have recently grappled with the foreign … Continue reading
Politico: Cybersecurity specialists are warning that President Donald Trump’s voter-fraud commission may unintentionally expose voter data to even more hacking and digital manipulation. Their concerns stem from a letter the commission sent to every state this week, asking for full … Continue reading
Chad Lawhorn for Lawrence Journal-World: And when the subject is illegal voting, Kobach normally becomes like a “Game of Thrones” fan at a cocktail party. You need an actual wizard to get out of that conversation. But evidently that is … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: Donald Trump’s attempt at voter suppression through his “election integrity” commission is a voting rights nightmare that is being enacted so clumsily it just might backfire….. Kobach’s likely going to use this information … Continue reading
[Bumped to top] I thought it could not get worse with the Pence-Kobach faux election integrity commission with the appointment of Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State of Kansas who has trumped up claims of voter fraud to advance his … Continue reading
This morning I blogged about the Pence-Kobach commission’s call for voter data, and how that raised privacy and other concerns. We we now have seen the letter (via Bryan Lowry), and it raises three immediateconcerns. The letter calls on each state’s … Continue reading
The sham Pence commission wants data from state voter rolls. But it is not clear how this will go. David Becker on the privacy issue and about concerns of securing the data.. It is also not clear whether Democratic election … Continue reading
Release of a very important Brennan Center report: Amid ongoing congressional investigations into Russia’s unprecedented cyberattacks around the 2016 election, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law released a report today outlining specific actions lawmakers can quickly … Continue reading